Voyager: Immortal
by EJKeller
Summary: Pursued by the Borg, Seven of Nine leads Voyager to what seems like a safe haven. But as Voyager's crew struggle to repair the ship, they learn their hiding place is not as safe as it seems, and that some horrors are too terrible to ever die.
1. Voyager: Immortal Prelude

In a place far removed from space or time, the Immortal stirred...  
Somewhere, a world was about to die...

The ancient planet hung in space. It's surface, where visible, was cracked and pitted.  
The air was thick with dust, whipped and churned by massive storms that tore at the broken rock. The wind driven particulates in the air, by themselves, would be enough to strip any living thing to it's bones in seconds. Terrible heat and toxins that could corrode almost any known substance completed the mix, turning the ancient world's surface into a fair approximation of Hell.  
It had not always been so. Far, far into the past, the world had been young. Lush and vibrant, orbiting it's parent star at a comfortable distance, life had arisen. Small at first, with time it spread, diversifed, evolved. Life covered the planet and was nurtured by it.  
Intelligence arose. One species rose above all others, spreading first across the planets surface, then outward to the stars around them. Ages past and the planet's children continued to grow, creating a great and flourishing civilization.  
The world that had given them life aged. By the hundreds, then thousands, then millions,  
the years past. The once lush and nurturing climate grew harsh, the abundant resources dwindled. Long abandoned by it's children, the world grew old. The air grew dense and hot, the surface broken and unwelcoming.  
The planet's home star, already well into it's middle age when the world was young, became increasingly unstable. Solar flares and ejections hammered the world, scorching it's already brutalized surface. The planet's orbit shifted and the gravitational forces from it's rapidly destabilizing sun pushed and pulled at the world, rending it's surface and causing it's core to grow and flare, threatening to turn the planet inside out.  
So it was, as the ancient world entered it's death throes, that the invaders came...

They had many names. Some were spoken with reverence, others as a curse. All were spoken with fear.  
They were of a thousand races, blended unwilling into one. They pursued a singular goal,  
searching for a unattainable outcome through the forced merging of flesh and metal. Each new conquest brought fresh horror. Civilizations great and small fell, all in service of a twisted dream of techno-organic perfection.  
They had liitle care for the ancient world's history. It's past, the saga of it's children,  
it's rapidly approaching end, were not what had drawn them there. All these things were irrelevant. As the world aged, it's increasingly hostile enviorment began to change the composition of the minerals in it's crust. What had been something relatively common and unimportant became, with the long passage of time, something exceedingly rare and valuable.  
These changed minerals were what had drawn the notice of the invaders. When properly processed,  
they formed the core of the vast Transwarp engines that powered their monsterous cube shaped starships. Elsewhere, the mineral was rare, and difficult to process in any useful quantities. Here,the crust of the ancient world was rich with it, a bounty the invaders would overcome any obstacle to possess. The cubes descended upon the world by the hundreds. Massive mining and refining centers arose across the planets surface while in orbit the great armada spun webs of energy around and through the world, forcing calm upon it's raging core and binding it's vast tectonic energy to still it's writhing crust.  
They knew death was waiting to claim the ancient planet. To them, it didn't matter.  
They would take what they wanted from this world, as they took any resource valuable to them, from any world. When they wanted something, resistance was irrelevant,  
enviorment was irrelevant, difficulty was irrelevant. The Borg wanted the unique mineral wealth of the dying world. Until they had it, they would make even death wait.

The Immortals ship settled into orbit around the ancient world, dwarfing the Borg cubes around it.  
The Borg did not detect the larger vessel because the Immortal did not make the effort to allow them to do so.  
The Immortal stood, gazing down upon the tortured surface below, the techno-organic structures of the Borg a grey cancer on a world already near death. Time whispered to the Immortal like the faintest of messages carried upon a breeze.  
There...

Once, he had had a name. Once he had had a family, a people, a world. Once he had felt joy and sadness and all the many other things that made up a life.  
Then the Borg came. Then there were screams and blood and the end of everything he knew or loved.  
Then there was only purpose and the cold, terrible will to carry that purpose out. Then he was Borg.  
His designation was One Of Four, Primary Overmonitering for Energy Allocation and Redistribution.  
His task was to monitor and adjust the movements of energy to the systems stabilizing the planet. With the other three drones of his node, he oversaw all aspects of calming the old world, so the precious mineral could be safely extracted down to it's last few grains.  
He moved through the shadowed interior of the Primary Control Center, ceaselessly checking the readouts,  
searching for any discrepency, any flaw in the system. He had done so since the PCC had been built and would continue to do so until it was no longer needed. He did not get bored, or tired. His attention did not waver and his dedication to his tasks was absolute.  
He was Borg. He was one of millions, all bound by the same purpose, all driven by one will. To still the dying world until they had what they needed from it. Nothing would stop them from achieving this. Nothing could stop them from achieving this. They were perfection. They were Borg.

The Immortal moved along the surface, the howling winds barely ruffling it's dark coverings. Towering cliffs of metal rose around it, the surfaces battered and pitted despite their armor and the protection of force fields.  
The massive Borg structures stretched from horizon to horizon, A vast city of Techno-Organic perfection, all dedicated to the one, all-important task.  
The Immortal paid no attention to the Borg structures, just as it ignored the churning, poisonous atmosphere. Time itself sang to the Immortal, guiding it not through the sands and structures that surrounded it, but through ages and eons long past and gone. Somewhere near, was the prize the Immortal sought. It passed into the nearest Borg structure, the Borg within unable to percieve it's presence. it moved deeper into the twisted maze of the interior, following the distant whispers in time.  
There... The Immortal stopped, facing a wall of incomprehensible Borg technology. It saw not the incredibly complex machinery, the massive guts of a vast, planet wide operation held in perfect balance by the sheer will of the Borg. It's gaze swept across eternity, seeing pathways in time incomprehensible to beings that suffered death. What it sought was very close. There... The Immortal stretched out a hand. There...

One of Four stopped suddenly, as a tremor ran through the Primary Control Center. It was not uncommon, even with the Borg energy fields binding it, for a world as old and unstable as this one to suffer techtonic activity.  
What was uncommon was for there to be no forewarning from any of the thousands of sensor nodes scattered throughout the planets interior.  
One of Four stepped towards the nearest interface station. The unexpected tremor should have been predicted. The sensors watching the planet were in turn watched by overmonitoring systems that were themselves watched by still other, even greater systems.  
There should have been no surprises. Every possibility had been forseen,  
every eventuality prepared for. The system was perfect. The system was Borg.  
The other drones of his Node were already doing thier own checks. One of Four was just beginning to access the sensors operational records when a titanic shockwave threw him and every other drone in the Primary Control Center into the air. He smashed into the ceiling with bone breaking force. Dark Borg blood sprayed the air as he fell away, only to be struck from below by what, a second earlier, had been part of the far wall.  
The air was filled with the scream of tearing metal as the structure was ripped apart around him.  
Explosions and unchecked energy discharges set the interior aflame. Bloodied and burned, One Of Four was struck from all directions by flying debris, some small, some huge. He dimly perceived the rapidly disintigrating Primary Control Center was spinning around him, while he was smashed from wall to wall, battered from all directions.  
The PCC was in freefall...

In orbit, amoung the Borg armada, chaos reigned. Something, some unknown force, had ripped a section of the old planets crust the size of a small continent from the surface and blasted it into space. Scores of Borg cubes were directly struck by chunks of rock the size of mountains and utterly destroyed. The planets gravitational field surged wildly. Some Borg cubes, much of thier power dedicated to the stabilizing fields, were unable to compensate quickly enough and fell from space. They burned and exploded in the maelstrom of rock, the monstorous blasts adding to the devastation.  
Other cubes were hurled out of orbit, the drones onboard fighting desperatly to control the huge vessels. Many collided, exploding like miniature suns before being smothered and consumed by the expanding debris field from the planet.  
The stabilizing energy fields collapsed. The planet, it's violence so long held in check,  
screamed it's deathsong. All across it's surface molten rock and pressurized, superheated gases exploded outward. The crust shattered and broke and the poisonous atmosphere turned to flame. Borg structures disintegrated like straw buildings in a hurricane, while inside, and in orbit,  
Borg Drones died by the millions.  
Death, too long held back, feasted...

Slowly, painfully, One of Four came back on Line. He was badly injured. His internal diagnostics showed multiple broken bones and ruptured organs. Both legs and his chest crushed. His implants, those that were still functioning, were trying to compensate, but could do little in the face of such damage.  
He was dying. Through the Collective's shared Nueral Link, he saw and felt the slaughter around him.  
The armada, and the old world were nearly gone. Most of the Borg in orbit, and nearly all on the planet's surface, were dead.  
He was buried in rock and loose earth, mixed with the wreckage of the PCC. Debris continued to fall on and around him. The air was superheated, burning his skin and his lungs. Had he not been Borg, he would have been screaming in agony. One arm was still free. Slowly, every movement causing his failing body more damage, he struggled to dig himself free. There was no point to it. He knew the Borg fleet was in ruins, he knew the world was disintigrating around him. The mission had failed. The Borg had failed. His cybernetic systems, rapidly shutting down one after the other, were unable to repair the hideous damage to his mangled body.  
Death had laid it's hand upon him and soon he would no longer function. Trying to dig himself out served no purpose. The Borg fleet, the precious mineral, the legions of drones working on the surface and in orbit, all were gone. The planet was tearing itself apart around him. Continuing to struggle was illogical. Irrelevant.  
Yet struggle he did, though even he could not have said why.  
As he continued to dig feebly through the debris, something shifted and the earth gave way beneath him.  
He fell end over end through a shower of rock and dirt, finally crashing hard onto unyielding stone. His few remaing implants, barely functional to start with, failed completely. Only his Neural Link remained active, the song of the Borg weakly sounding in his mind.  
He felt himself dying, felt his conciousness flicker and dim. He should have simply lain there and let it all end but somehow, he couldn't. Without purpose or hope, beyond any sense of reason,  
he felt the need to continue to struggle.  
Blood charring as it flowed from his mouth, his broken bones grinding beneath torn muscle, One Of Four forced himself to his knees and looked around him.  
He was near the bottom of a vast, bowl shaped depression. Sand and loose dirt whirled around with hurricane force. Slabs of rock, miles long, hung suspended in the air, slowly grinding against each other yet somehow not falling. All around, vast geysers of magma blasted into the air as the old world's interior vomitted itself into space. The air was on fire and the entire nightmarish scene glowed red like the blood of Hell itself.  
All except the center, where One Of Four knelt. The magma rose on all sides but did not rain down there, nor did the miles of cracking, splintering rock in the air fall to crush everything below. There,  
in the very heart of Armageddon, there was, impossibly, calm.  
Something, some small movement, caught One Of Four's attention. A short distance away were several interlocking rings of worked stone that once,long ago, could have formed the foundation of a building. They were ancient and there was little left. Whatever they had been, they had long ago been buried, so long ago they had become one with the bedrock of the ancient world.  
Movement again. Standing in the middle of the ruins was a solitary figure, completely covered and cloaked in black. It moved slowly, Oblivious to the devastation raging around it,  
staring down at a small pile of debris scattered against one side of the broken, ancient foundations.  
As One Of Four watched, the figure carefully, almost reverently, knelt at the base of the wall...

There... The Immortal knelt inside the ruined dwelling, taking no notice of the holocaust it had caused raging around it. With great care, it reached out, the layers of dirt and pulverized stone moving away at it's gesture. Gently, almost tenderly, it picked up a battered, cracked stack of octaginal slabs of black glass, loosely bound on one side by a tattered strip of flexible metal.  
Holding them as though they were the most precious of treasures to have ever existed, the Immortal, with the greatest of care, turned the first of the obsidian pages over.  
For a long moment, there was complete and utter silence. Then in the faintest of voices, in a language dead and forgotten for millions of years, the glass book began to sing to the Immortal...

One of Four watched as the dark figure listened to the sounds coming from the object it was holding. It drew the object into it's black wrappings, bending over it as if protecting something of unimagineable value.  
One of Four knelt there, unable to comprehend the things he was seeing. The dark robed figure was not Borg. Could it be responsible for the cataclysm that had consumed this world and the Borg with it? Did such power even exist?  
The dark figure stayed huddled with it's prize, ignoring the flaming corpse of the old world burning around them. One of Four was nearly dead, yet he was suddenly seized by a need to know, to understand. He opened his mouth to speak only to find his throat choked with charred blood and bile. He tried to move,  
but his crushed legs and ravaged insides wouldn't respond. Instead, he fell over, barely catching himself with his one functional arm.  
Crippled, barely maintaining his grip on life, he raised his head. A few meters away,  
the dark robed figure had straightened. It stood motionless for a second, as though listening to something. Then it slowly turned, and looked at him.  
And what had once been One Of Four began to scream, a high pitched, wailing scream beyond terror or horror. Those condemmened to the deepest pits of Hell could not have made a noise so terrible.  
He was still screaming when the oceans of magma all around came crashing down upon him,  
and the millions of tonnes of rock floating in the sky fell. Still screaming as the ancient world finally ripped itself apart in a titanic detonation...

All that was left of the world was a expanding cloud of superheated rock and gas. Less than a year later, having been strained by the planet's sudden breakup, the old Star it had orbited went nova.  
The shockwave destroyed what little was left in the system, leaving behind only a slowly expanding nebula to mark the place where so much and so many had perished.


	2. Voyager: Immortal Chapter One

'This isn't going to end well.' Captain Kathryn Janeway thought to herself as she tightened her grip on her command chair. The USS Voyager, Intrepid class Federation Starship trembled as a charge of green plasma energy detonated against her shields.

At the helm, Lieutenant Tom Paris's hands flew across the controls, sending Voyager shearing off of her previous course. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he fought to evade the incoming weapons fire while still maintaining maximum speed.

Voyager was running for her life. Fast and Agile, she raced through the emptiness at her maximum speed of Warp Nine point Five. The ship was being pushed hard for good reason.

Far behind her, but closing the gap with each passing second, the massive forms of two Borg cubes raced in pursuit.

Paris sent voyager reeling off course again, just dodging a barrage of Borg weapons fire. Voyager was pushing her engines to their limits, but was still unable to pull away from the pursuing cubes. Dodging the hail of Borg fire slowed them even more while the cubes slowly but inexorably closed the gap.  
Another Plasma charge detonated right next to them, shaking Voyager hard. At the Tactical station,  
Lieutenant Tuvok watched as more and more of his readouts turned red.  
"Shields down to forty percent..." he announced with typically Vulcan calm. "At the current rate we are taking fire, shields will fail in approximately one hundred twenty seconds."

"Engineering!" Seated next to Janeway, Voyager's first officer Chakotay roared into the comm.  
"B'elanna! We need more speed. Whatever we have left, divert it to the engines...!"  
"The only things left are shields and Life Support!" B'elanna Torres, Voyager's half-Klingon Chief Engineer howled back. "We already diverted everything else four minutes ago! There IS nothing left!"

Chakotay turned and shared a look with Janeway. Both knew Torres to be an exceptional engineer, capable of thinking up solutions few others could and then pulling off a well timed miracle or two to make those solutions happen.

Right now however, with the Borg closing on them and shields about to fail, it seemed there were no solutions and even fewer miracles to be had.  
Voyager trembled again from another near miss. "Shields down to twenty five percent." Tuvok announced flatly. He glanced down as one of the readouts on his board beeped for attention.

"Sensors show a third Borg vessel, approaching from One Eight Five mark Seven Zero. It is attempting to cut us off."  
"Tom!" Janeway called, a hint of desperation in her voice.  
"Aye Captain...!" Paris was already adjusting Voyagers course. Seconds crawled by, each one an eternity.  
"Borg vessels continue to close." Tuvok announced. Plasma blasts hit Voyager from two seperate directions, shaking the fleeing vessel hard.

At his station, Voyager's security officer needed all his Vulcan strength to prevent himself from being hurled to the deck. "Shields down to five percent..."  
The Captain felt something cold and sickening grip her heart. She looked over to where Commander Chakotay was painfully trying to rise from where he had been hurled. His expression was a mirror of her own.

"Mr Tuvok..." At least her voice sounded steady. " Prepare to activate self-destruct..."

"Astrometrics to bridge..."A voice sounded from the comms, hard and urgent. "Change course immediately to One Six Eight mark One Three Five...!"  
For a stunned second, no one on the Bridge spoke. Chakotay was the first to find his voice.

" Seven, what the Hell..."

"There is no time!" Her voice cut him off. "Change course now! It is Voyager's only chance for survival!" For a stunned second, time stood still. "Helm!" Janeway spoke first, her voice as hard as stone. "Change course! One Six Eight mark One Three Five!"

"Aye Captain!" Paris was already hammering on his controls. Voyager arced away from her previous course in a wild, looping turn of over one hundred degrees. Her new course actually took her closer to one of the pursuing cubes but the Borg, taken completely off guard by the strange manuever, were unable to react fast enough. Voyager shot away on her new course, the cubes ponderously turning to try and catch their far more agile prey.

On Voyager's bridge, the crew was still trying to understand what had just happened. "Damage reports!" Chakotay rose from the First Officers position, making a fast tour of the bridge stations as Janeway thumbed her comm.

"Seven, report!" The Captain managed to keep her voice steady, despite being as confused as any of them.

The answer came immediately. "We must hold this course and speed for 5 minutes, 23 seconds. There is a nebula directly ahead. Once we enter it, we will be safe."  
Of all the answers the crew had imagined would come, that was not one of them. "A nebula...?"  
Janeway sounded incredulous. "Seven, this course is taking us straight back towards the heart of Borg space. How is a nebula going to help us..?"

"Captain, we will be safe from the Borg once we enter the gas cloud. No Borg vessel will follow us once we are inside."  
"They've followed us halfway across the Quadrant..." At the helm, Paris was doing everything he could to coax just a little more speed from the engines. "How is a big gas cloud going to stop them...?"

The answer was as immediate as it was chilling. "Because the Borg are terrified of it..."

For the second time in as many moments, the bridge crew was stunned to silence. Thier war with Species 8472 may have taught the Borg caution, but fear? That was something the collective did not experience.

A loud tone sounded from Tuvok's board, making more than a few crewmembers jump.  
"Sensors are now detecting the nebula. Estimating four minutes ten secounds until we reach the outer perimeter. Nebula is approximately two point five light years across, moderately sized.  
Composition appears fairly standard, with traces of some more exotic elements."

"On screen" Janeway turned forward as the view of the stars streaking by was replaced by a image of their hoped for place of salvation.

It was ugly, a baleful, misshapen cloud of brownish red gas that looked almost like a eye.  
It was shot through with streamers of burning orange and near the center a fiercely glowing iris of yellow marked the remains of the star whose death had birthed the cloud.

Tuvok's board again beeped for attention. "The Borg vessels are continuing pursuit.  
Now at Warp nine point six and closing. Estimated they will be in firing range in three minutes fifty seconds."  
"It's going to be close..." Chakotay was running the numbers through his console. The Borg would be in range to start shooting right about the same time Voyager would need to decelerate to safely enter the nebula.

Janeway's expression was grim. "Too close..." The Captain was weighing options in her head and not liking any of them. "Engineering, reduce Life Support by fifty percent and re-direct the power into the engines."

"Captain...!" Chakotay's voice held both a question and a warning. Below in Engineering the Chief Engineer was right with him. "Bridge..." Torres called, "Please confirm order to reduce..."  
"Confirmed...!" Janeway cut her off hard. "Now do it!"  
"Understood..." Came the reply. At the helm, Paris tapped a fast sequence of commands into his board. Seconds crawled by, each one feeling like a century.  
"Speed now Warp nine point six." He finally reported. "Estimating nebula outer boundary in two minutes.."

Janeway spent a moment looking over her own display. "Tuvok...?" Up at his station,  
the Tactical Officer was busily keying in commands of his own. "we are maintaining our distance from the Borg Vessels. However travelling at this velocity is dangerously over stressing the engines."

"Two more minutes. Just hold on for two more minutes..." Janeway said, as much to herself as to anyone else.

The seconds crawled by. First one, then two, then a whole host of warning alarms joined the roaring of the Warp Engines.

"Engineering to bridge...!" Torres voice was equal parts rage and fear. "We've lost two Warp Coils and have multiple Plasma conduit failures in both nacelles! The engines can't handle these loads! Catastrophic failure is imminent if we don't cut our speed!"  
"Negative." Janeway said, her voice iron. "We're almost there. Maintain velocity."  
"The engines will blow!" Torre's reply was as hot as the ship's drive. "Captain,  
we can't..."

"Captain!" Tuvok's tone cut through the cacophany. "The Borg vessels are decelerating!"  
"Confirm...!" Janeway had to work to keep her voice steady.  
"Confirmed. Borg vessels have dropped to Warp five and are continuing to slow. They are also changing course, away from the nebula."

"Speaking of which..." Paris sounded only a little bit frantic. "Nebula boundary in thirty seconds. At this velocity..."

Janeway didn't let him finish. "Helm, all back full! Reduce to Warp point five!"

She turned to her right. "Tuvok! Whatever power we have left, divert it to forward shields!"

The roar of the Warp engines turned into a howl as Voyager fought to shed her incredible velocity.

At the Helm, sweat was dripping into Paris's eyes, making them sting. "Warp six.. Warp Five point five... Warp five..."  
"Ten seconds to nebula perimeter.." Tuvok, at least, sounded calm.  
Chakotay keyed his comm. "All stations, brace for severe turbulence!"  
"Warp three... Warp two..." Paris was gripping his console so tightly he was sure he was leaving dents in the metal.  
Tuvok's board sounded a long, wailing tone. "Nebula boundry reached..."

Voyager broke out of warp speed just as she hit the gaseous edge of the nebula. Her shields flared star white as the ship went from open space to thick dust and gas while still travelling at a appreciable amount of the speed of light.

The energy of the entry turned the gas to plasma as a cone shaped shockwave blasted outward from Voyager's point of impact. A trail of churning fire marked the vessels path into the nebula.

Inside crewmembers were hurled away from thier stations to smash into walls and floors. Blood and desperate cries filled the air. The ship shuddered wildly as the hull screamed in protest at the forces it was being asked to endure.

On the bridge consoles exploded and flames raced along ruptured conduits. Sparks rained down from shorting lights while the air rang with alarms and the desperate calls of injured crew.

Janeway was thrown hard to the deck. At the helm, Paris let out a howl of pain as part of the console exploded under his hands, scorching them.

The hull shrieked like a living thing and the ship shook so hard it seemed impossible it would not fly to pieces. Clinging desperately to a railing support, Chakotay's teeth chattered from the violent pounding, while seemingly every alarm Voyager had wailed thier song of Warning.

And then, it was over. The terrible shaking eased, then stopped. Voyager, having slowed nearly to a stop, drifted through the thick clouds of gas and particulates. Onboard,  
emergency lights flickered, then held steady. Auto Fire Suppression systems extinguished the hundreds of small blazes that had broken out and the life support system rapidly began to clear the smoke and other, more toxic substances from the ship's atmosphere.

Throughout the vessel, crewmembers rushed to aid thier injured shipmates and worked to stabilize the worst of Voyager's badly damaged systems. Outwardly, thier movements were practiced, swift and professional. Inwardly a dozen different Gods and Dieties of dozens of different species were offered prayers of thanks as Voyagers crew began to realize they were not going to die.

On the bridge, a sore and bruised First Officer slowly rose to his feet. He gazed around at the badly damaged stations while silently thanking his ancestors that he would not be joining them that day.

"Main power is down." Tuvok was patiently and methodically silencing alarms while quickly assessing the ship's condition. "Emergency power is holding at fifty percent.  
Shields are down. Impulse power is out, the Warp drive suffered extensive damage. Life Support Systems are holding."

"Sensors..!" Chakotay was moving over to a crumpled form on the deck. "We need to know the position of the Borg cubes..."

Up at the Operations station, Ensign Harry Kim was working his few operable controls,  
while looking midly suprised to be still breathing. "Sensors are inoperable. Trying to bypass the damaged systems now."

At his post, Tuvok had managed to still almost all the alarms. "Damage Control teams reporting from all decks. Multiple main systems damaged, but repairable." He checked another display. "Sickbay is fully operable and recieving casualties. Medical teams have deployed throughout the ship."

"Get one up here." Chakotay knelt beside the slender form on the deck and after checking for and seeing no obvious signs of broken bones, gently turned her over.

"Ow..." was the best Janeway could do just then. She had a nasty lump over her left eye and a ugly gash that ran from her left ear up her head. Blood matted her auburn hair to the side of her face.

"Sensors are back On-Line." Tuvok announced from above.

"Staus of Borg ships..." Janeway struggled unsteadily to her feet, supported by Chakotay.

Tuvok was already communing with his instruments. " Borg vessels have retreated and are holding position five light-minutes from the nebulas outermost boundary." He double verified one readout. " They are not attempting to orbit the nebula, nor are they moving into a search pattern."

"Thank you Seven." Chakotay said quietly while helping Janeway back into her command seat. The medical teams had arrived and were tending to the most seriously injured while the rest of the crew set about repairing what they could. The ship had taken a serious beating. Chakotay looked around, seeing the extent of the task before them.

"This is going to be a job..." He mumbled to himself. A Medtech moved past him and began tending to the Captains injuries. Janeway glanced up at her executive officer and managed a weak smile. "That's one Hell of a understatement Commander."

Chakotay replied with a grim nod. Very, very true. but at least, for now, it seemed they were safe and might actually live long enough to be able to get that job done.

Several decks below, in Astrometrics, a tall, slim figure stood staring at the wall sized main display, currently filled with a computer generated image of the nebula they had just entered. Seven Of Nine's piercing blue eyes were wide with a barely contained mixture of fear and horror. Her slender frame trembled so hard her teeth ground together and a single cold tear ran down her pale cheek.

She whispered to herself, in a voice that could only come from the truly damned. "What have I Done..."


	3. Voyager: Immortal Chapter Two

Voyager floated through the relatively calm space between two massive dust clouds.  
Shifting patterns of Brown, Red and Orange light washed over her hull, punctuated by the strobe like flashes of miles long electrical discharges.

Tiny points of brilliant light flared along Voyagers hull, as spacesuited damage control teams worked to repair the ship's outer armor. The crews worked at a steady, deliberate pace. Outside of the protection of the hull was not the place to be careless.

Inside the hull, the work was just as deliberate, only on a far larger scale.  
Voyager's last moment escape from the Borg had left the Federation Starship badly damaged. Despite Seven Of Nines claim the Borg would never enter the nebula where Voyager sheltered, the knowledge of how near to death or assimilation they had been added a certain sense of urgency to the repair efforts.

Engineering became the hub of all the activity. B'elanna Torres and her team were kept busy cataloging the damage, prioritizing which systems needed repaired first and generally organizing the efforts to put Voyager back together again.

Torres finished briefing a group of technicians on thier next task, then turned back to where the Captain and Tuvok stood waiting. She had already gone over the status of Life Support and Weapons.

"The Engines and shields took the worst of it..." She continued. "Lateral,  
Dorsal and Aft shields are recharging now, but hitting the Nebula at the speed we did..." She shook her head. "The forward shield emitters are literally ash, completely burned up. They can't be repaired, they need to be replaced."

Janeway had to stop herself from scratching the MedPatch that covered her ear. "And the Drive systems..?"

Torres expression hovered between anger and sorrow. "Thrusters are operational.  
Repairs to the Impulse drives should take about another four hours. The Warp drive..." She paused. There was no easy way to say it. "The Warp drive is in bad shape. Really, really bad shape."

She led the Captain and Security Officer over to one of the main damage control stations. The staus display showed a 3D image of Voyager's critical systems. A alarming percentage of the Engineering sections were red.

"The Port Nacelle took the worst of it." She gestured to the display. "We have four Warp coils completely burned up. They can't be re-conditioned, they need replacing." She pointed out another part of the image. "We lost almost all the Plasma Conduits in that Nacelle and about forty percent of the ones in the Starboard engine. We had about a dozen breaches of the Plasma coolant system and the reserve is pretty much gone. Repairing the leaks won't be that hard. Regenerating the lost coolant is going to take awhile though."

Janeway narrowed her eyes as she looked over the display. "And the good news is...?" she said flatly.

Somewhat suprisingly, Torres had some. "The good news is, Seven picked the right nebula to hide in. The gases and particulates are full of the types of ores we need to synthesize replacement components, even the Warp Coils. I've already got the Transporter crews beaming the stuff onboard by the ton." She waved a hand tiredly around at her Engineering staff. "We'll have what we need to make the repairs,  
it'll just take a serious amount of time."  
"Twenty eight days, eight hours approximately..." Tuvok's voice, as usual,  
was flat and calm. He made the proclamation with all the inflection of someone reading from a text book.

Janeway and Torres both shot him irritated looks. "One month..." The Captain said quietly. She knew it would be bad but this... "Damn..."

Tuvok said nothing, having nothing to add. Torres shifted uncomfortably,  
then spoke in an uncertain tone.

"Captain, about the nebula..." Janeway looked over at the younger officer. "It'll supply us with what we need to repair the ship. But what did Seven say about why the Borg won't enter it? I mean..." The Engineer was having trouble finding the right way to phrase what she was thinking.

"I'm grateful we're not dead." Torres went on. "But if there's something about this place that scares even the Borg..." She licked lips suddenly dry.  
"'Can' we spend a month here...?"

"I know B'elanna..." Janeway quietly cut off the half Klingon woman. "For now,  
we really don't have another choice. We're in no shape to run or fight." She took a breath. "If this place keeps the Borg at bay..."  
She didn't finish the thought. Tuvok quietly moved up to stand next to her and she nodded.  
"Our next stop is Astrometrics. Seven is going to brief us on our new, hopefully temporary home."

Torres looked unhappy, although Janeway sensed more uneasiness than anger. "Aye Captain." She said.

Janeway nodded, then gestured to Tuvok to follow her. "Keep us informed. Anything you need to aid the repair efforts, let us know."

Torres nodded tightly, then moved back into the nightmare that was coordinating those repair efforts as the Captain and Security Officer made thier way out of Engineering and hopefully, towards some answers.

Once she had had a name. Annika Hansen. Once she had had a family, and was loved by them.  
Once, she had had a life, and a future, and all the things the young hoped for.

Then the Borg had taken her. Then she became as much metal as flesh. Then she had no will of her own, only the overwhelming song of millions of minds forced together into a collective conciousness. Then she was cold, remorseless. Then she was Borg.

Seven Of Nine stood in the center of Astrometrics, typing instructions into her control panel. No longer Borg, yet not quite Human, the uniqueness of her life was not lost on her.

When first freed from the Collective by Captain Janeway and Voyager's crew, She had been lost, enraged and, worst of all, alone. Her existance as she knew it had been brutally and irrevocable ripped from her and the only certainty she had felt was that she could not survive the loss.

Time, as it always did, had changed things. The process of reclaiming her individuality had been a slow, and at times, painful journey back towards Humanity. Just as some of her cybernetic implants could never be removed, there were aspects of her life as a individual she doubted she could ever return to.

Still, her shipmates ( and yes, in her more human moments she could admit, her friends. ),  
had become her family, her home, her...Collective. When she had been Borg the very concept would have been beyond her. Now, after living amoung them, being accepted as one of them, being cared for by them...

The door to Astrometrics slid open and Captain Janeway and Tuvok entered. Seven took a slightly unsteady breath and turned to face them.

Now, after learning how to care about them in return, have I led them to thier deaths... ?

"Seven, report..." Janeway said quietly as she moved up to the taller woman. Seven smoothly typed a command into her board, then gestured to the large display.

"Voyager is holding position Seven hundred and fifty two thousand kilometers inside the nebula." She touched a key and several points of light appeared outside the computer generated gas cloud.

"The Borg vessels held position several light minutes outside the Nebula without assuming search formation. Approximately thirty minutes after our entry, all Borg vessels broke away and retreated towards Borg space..." She touched another key and the lights moved away.

"And it is your assertion..." Tuvok spoke without preamble. "That the Borg would not enter the Nebula because they feared it...?"

Seven was visibly uncomfortable. "Yes. Thier departure would seem to bear that out, although I will continue to monitor for..."

"Seven..." Janeways voice, though quiet, carried a edge. "Explain. Explain why a species that has consumed countless worlds and thier peoples would be afraid of a simple stellar phenomenon."

For a moment, Seven didn't answer. Janeway was about to speak again when she realized the younger woman was trembling. "Seven...?"

'What have I done...' Seven thought. She took a breath, spoke in a voice that was shaking only slighty more than the rest of her body.

"Because this Nebula is all that is left of a event that slaughtered four-  
fifths of all the Borg who existed at that time. Millions of Borg, in a matter of minutes, dead. All in such a way, by something so terrible, the Collective severed the Neural links to all the dying drones. Cut them off completely,  
before whatever was killing them could spread throughout the Collective and completely destroy it..." 


	4. Voyager: Immortal Chapter Three

Seven paused a moment, noting the shocked expression on the Captains face. Tuvok, at least outwardly, appeared unfazed by her comment. Seven belived she knew better.

She took the moment to steady herself. "Nine thousand, eight hundred and twenty three years ago,  
this nebula was a small, unremarkable star system. Three planets orbiting a older, unstable star."

Her fingers tapped a new sequence into her board and the display changed, showing the system as it had been ten millenia before.

"Initial scans showed little. None of the planets appeared habitable and there was no strategic value in the system's location. It wasn't until the mineralogical data was analyized that the Borg found something of great importance."

The display shifted, moving in on the planet closest to the star. It was a ugly world.  
The atmosphere was violently turbulent and the surface was a wasteland of torn and battered rock.

"The innermost world was unstable. The atmosphere was toxic and the surface was constantly fractured by intense siesmic activity. The shifting gravitational tides from the parent star were slowly tearing the planet apart."

Janeway took a step forward. To her eyes, there was something unsettling about the battered sphere on the screen.

Tuvok also, was peering intently at the image. If he felt any discomfort at it however, his voice did not betray it. "And the Borg found something of value there..."

It was not a question. Seven typed in a new sequence and a complicated chemical formula apeared in blue on the display. Blue shading also overlaid the areas of the planet where the chemical was common.

A very large section of the planet was now blue.

"The Federation does not have a name for this particular mineral and the Borg designation is irrelevant at this point. The mineral is used to form the core of Borg Transwarp drive systems. It is usually extrememly rare. Less than one world in every thousand has any detectable traces of it."  
She nodded to the display. "This planet's entire crust was rich with it. More of it and at a higher grade than ever encountered before. Enough ore to serve the Collectives needs for thousands if not tens of thousands of years."

She again manipulated the controls and an entire fleet of cube shaped starships descended upon the planet in the display.

"First the planet was stabilized, then mining operations began in ernest. The Collective at the time dedicated nearly all thier available resources to the project. The difficulties were immense but it was decided the reward was worth the risks..."

Seven hesitated, and Janeway noticed a thin sheen of perspiration forming on the other woman's brow. "Something went wrong..." Tuvok spoke quietly, also noting Seven's distress.

Seven didn't answer immediately. She couldn't. The fear she was feeling was making her stomach churn. She swallowed several times, but the sick feeling of despair she was experiencing would not so easily be silenced.

Janeway gave her the space she needed. After a few moments, Seven began speaking again.

"Mining had been progressing for a little less than four months. The planet was becoming increasing destabilized because of it, but the Collective was determined to complete the operation."

She gestured to the display, where a handful of cubes began moving away from the system.

"The initial shipments of processed ore had begun when a... Force... Of unknown origin attacked the planet. A section of the planet's crust roughly eight thousand kilometers square suddenly exploded and was hurled into orbit and beyond. Hundreds of Cubes were destroyed in seconds."

On the screen, a terrifyingly large part of the planet detonated with nearly unimagineable violence. A huge part of the Borg armada was swept out of existance.

"The planet broke apart... Or should have. The energy fields the Borg were using to stabilize the Sesimic activity were gone. The planet started to shatter, but again, something, some... Force...  
held it together."

The image of the world was a seething cauldron of exploding rock and gushing magma. It should have flown to pieces, but somehow, someway,  
it kept it's shape.

Janeway was stunned, as much by the incredible violence on the screen as by the look of near desperate fear on Seven's face.

"But why..." The Captain began. "Did you call it an attack? From what you're describing it could have been..."

What little color Seven normally had was gone. "No..." Her voice had more than a hint of panic in it. "Because of what happened next. There were a small number of drones still functional, despite the cataclysm. A few on the planet's surface, more in the surviving cubes in Orbit. It struck the drones on the surface first, then spread through the Collectives nueral link to those above."

"What spread...?" Even Tuvok was starting to sound uneasy. Janeway watched Seven's face, watched the burning colors reflected from the display flare in her eyes. When she didn't answer the Captain carefully reached out, intending to offer a comforting touch on the arm.

Seven pulled away from the Captains fingers before they could make contact. She was shaking all over and Janeway realized with alarm the young former drone was riding right on the edge of losing control.

Seven shook her head violently and turned away from the display. She stayed that way for a short time, drawing deep, unsteady breathes.

The Captain was stunned. Life as a drone had left Seven with a utterly pragmatic, calculated view of nearly everything she encountered. To see her in such deep emotional distress...

After a few moments, Seven seemed to regain some sembelance of balance. "We don't know what ' it ' was..." She began, turning back to her station.

"Whatever it was it utterly destroyed the Borg in that system. Each drone affected had thier minds completely and totally obliterated, leaving only a all consuming fear that killed them within seconds."

On the screen the devastated planet finally ripped itself asunder. Seven's voice was a haunted echo of the violence there.

"Fear, terror, horror. These are just words. There are no words, in any known language, that can convey, even in the tiniest part, what spread througout the Borg in that system. The Collective couldn't process, couldn't stop, couldn't even comprehend what was happening."

"In a matter of seconds the entire collective would have been wiped out, so they did the only thing they could. The Nueral link to every Borg in and around the affected area was severed and they were left to die."

On the screen, the cloud of burning gas and molten rock that had once been a planet continued to slowly expand. As the Captain and Tactical officer watched,  
Seven shakily tapped in a new series of commands,

The simulation jumped ahead in time. The debris field of the dead planet had expanded to cover a large portion of it's former orbit. As They looked on the Primary began to flare, going through several cycles of increasing violence before exploding in a vast cataclysm that consumed the entire system.

Seven was backlit by the glare from the blast. "Shortly after the planet was destroyed, the star it had orbited destabilised and went nova, destroying everything in the system and creating this nebula..."

The simulation ended, the screen fading to black. Seven remained facing it, her back to the other two officers. Her voice, when she spoke, was very,  
very small, and very, very afraid.

"A very large part of the collective perished in those few minutes. The Borg,  
as we know them, came closer to total destruction then any time before or since. For thousands of years the Collective struggled to recover. Much of what was lost has never been rediscovered."

Seven turned away from her console, facing Janeway and Tuvok with haunted,  
glassy eyes.

"In the nearly ten thousand years since, no Borg vessel has dared returned here. None have entered the nebula. The Collective could not understand what happened here.  
At thier strongest, the Borg were nearly wiped out without warning, by something so terrible to know it was to be destroyed by it. Only the fear of what had happened survived."

"The Borg fear whatever attacked them might still be lurking here, waiting to be provoked again...?" Tuvok sounded both concerned and dubious.

Seven lowered her head, anger creeping into her voice. "My words, any words,  
are utterly insufficent to describe the magnitude of what happened here. I have failed to properly convey the impact these events had on the Collective. In all likelihood, there is no form of communication that can sufficently relate why the Borg feel this fear. They simply do." Her gaze was haunted. "As do I..."

"And this is the ' safe ' haven you promised us...?" Janeway's voice held a edge.

"From the Borg, yes." Seven's voice turned unapologetic. "To have remained outside the nebula meant certain capture, death and assimilation. Here, inside, capture and assimilation will not happen. We will have time and the freedom to repair Voyager and plan our best avenues for escape."

"If the same fate that befell the Borg doesn't strike us down as well..." Janeway was feeling fear, anger and betrayal, all at the same time.

"In God's name Seven, if whatever destroyed the Borg here did so with such ease,  
why lead us straight into it's grasp...?"

"For multiple reasons..." The taller woman began. "The most important of which is this is the one place the Borg will not pursue us. That much is fact." Seven gestured to the now dark display.

"The Borg invaded this system en masse, accelerating it's destruction in the process.  
Voyager, by comparison, is infintesimal, tiny. We lack the power to do any kind of real damage here, on any scale."

"You believe Voyager may be beneath the notice of whatever might still dwell here..." Tuvok said it as a fact, not a question.

"Yes..." Seven's reply was as straightforward as Tuvok's. "The circumstances between what happened then and our intrusion now are vastly different. So much so that our entry here may not guareentee our destruction by whatever power might still exist in this nebula."

She looked the Captain straight in the eye. "A possibility we would not have had in the hands of the Borg..."

Both the Captains gaze and her voice were hard. "That is a very slender thread you've chosen to hang our lives on..."

Seven's reply was more weary than angry. "Yes..." She said "It was also the only thread available. A tiny chance of survival is preferable to no chance at all. There was no time for consultation or explanation. We are commited to this course of action. What happens from here forward will serve as judgement for the correctness of my decision."

"And if your judgement is in error?" Tuvok's voice was as cold as the Captains eyes.

There was a chilling finality in Seven's reply. "Then we will all die, it will be my doing and no one will remain to proclaim my guilt or judge the depth of my failure..."


	5. Voyager: Immortal Chapter Four

"Captains Log, Supplemental. It's been two weeks since Voyager was forced into hiding within the nebula. So far, true to Seven's story, there has been no trace of the Borg outside the gas cloud. The danger, at least from them, appears over as of now..."

The Captain hesitated. Yes, the Borg were staying well away. Unfortunately, as Voyager's crew were learning, the fear that kept them away may have been founded in more than the simple memory of a ancient holocaust.  
As more and more time passed, trapped within the Nebula, the more a feeling of building, unfocused oppression seemed to settle onto the crew. For most, it seemed to be a feeling of not-rightness, of being someplace they were not meant to be. Someplace dangerous to be.  
For other's, the feelings had grown into a fear that seemed unfocused and irrational, yet strong enough to be debilitating. Most, for the moment, seemed able to fight through it, but a handful of crewmembers had to be confined to Sickbay and sedated. The ones who remained able to talk all described the same thing. A smothering, all consuming terror, a feeling of something so terrible that to be noticed by it would mean complete and utter destruction. The worst of it was the certainty that thier doom was already upon them, and was simply waiting for them to notice it before it struck...

The Captain gave herself a hard mental shake. Enough...  
"Repairs continue on schedule. Chief Engineer Torres is overseeing the final installation of the new shield emmiters. Even though there seems to be no immediate threat,  
it will be good to have Voyager's defensive systems back up to where they should be.

We continue to move deeper into the Nebula, following the richest concentrations of the ores we need for repairs. Barring anything unforseen, we are on track to finish with repairs in two weeks time. I've asked Commander Chakotay and Seven to begin developing a plan for safely exiting the Nebula and escaping this sector of space, hopefully without any further contact with the Borg."

"And that'll be the trick..." Tom Paris turned slightly in his seat. "Considering how well they took it the last time we tried to leave without saying goodbye."

Up at the Sensors console, the Captain couldn't help but grin at the younger officers comment. "Mind your helm Mr. Paris..." She said mildly, still very glad to feel something other than dread, no matter how briefly.

Working alongside Harry Kim, they were almost finished repairing the last of the battle damage to the long range sensor systems.

She plugged several of the newly replicated isolinear chips into thier slots, watched as previously dark sections of the system lit back up. Next to her.  
Kim typed in a continous series of commands on his console, making sure the newly repaired sections powered up and integrated properly as they came back on Line.

"I think that got it Captain..." Kim began, studying his displays. "Long range sensors are cycling up and the operating system rebuild is nearly there. Once the system alignment completes and the self-checks are done, we should have full sensors capability again."

Janeway nodded as she began gathering her tools. "Good work Harry." She put away the last of her gear, closed the toolkit. "How long for the system restart..?"

She already knew the answer of course, but just couldn't supress her natural urge to play the part of teacher.

"Umm..." Harry spent a few moments looking over his board. "Five minutes...?"

"Sounds about right..." She nodded to him as she stepped away from the Sensors Station, leaving the finishing touches to the Ensign.

Walking back to her command chair, Janeway let her eyes sweep across the bridge, feeling a sense of pride in her crew replace her earlier worry.

When they had first plunged into thier gaseous hiding place, Voyager had been nearly wrecked. In the two weeks since the crews tireless efforts had returned the ship to near full functionality. Only a handful of major systems still needed work before they could, hopefully, leave this haunted sector of space behind them forever.

Dropping her toolkit on her chair, she leaned over and keyed the comm, not noticing the puzzled expression spreading across Harry Kim's features. "B'elanna, what's your status?"

Several hundred feet forward and literally standing on the nose of the ship, Torres raised her arm and touched a key on her suits comm panel. "On schedule Captain. The last of the new emitters is in place. We should have them tied in and integrated in about ten minutes."

She looked up, watching as the round nosed Sphinx workpod pulled away from where it had just placed the last emitter. The technical crews were already securing it,  
the flares from thier plasma torches making her wince.

Looking away, she took a moment to scan the nebula. The dirty browns had given way to burnt oranges and bloody reds. The particulates were thicker here, creating a foggy effect, making everything seem surreal and slightly out of focus. The occassional static discharge backlight a vast field of floating rocks, some smaller than Voyager, others larger than mountains.

Voyager had, very, very carefully, moved deeper into the nebula, following the greatest concentrations of valuable ores. Here, nearer the chaotic center of the gas cloud, were the vast fields of debris that had once been a solar system.

"Got it Lieutenat..." A voice in her Comm pulled her back to the task at hand.  
"Emitter is secured and tied in..."

She lowered her gaze back to her work crews. All were giving her a thumbs-up or some equally positive gesture. She raised her PADD, tabbed in a series of commands. The resulting schematics brought a tight smile to her face.

"Nice work..." she said, studying the readout. The emitter was tied in and powering up.  
One or two bits of fine tuning and the shields would be as good as... Well... new.

Turning to face the bridge she reached for the comm keys on her suit arm. "Torres to Bridge. The last of the new Emitters is installed and ready. We should have full shields..."

She stopped. She had felt something, a trembling in the hull, under her feet. The other Engineers must have felt it as well because all cross chatter on the comms suddenly fell silent.

She turned sharply, looking towards the edge of Voyager's elongated saucer section. The thrusters ports were glowing, flaring every few seconds as the ship began to accelerate.

Voyager was manuevering.

"What the Hell...!" She snarled. Manuevering at any speed while there were crew working outside on the hull was incredibly dangerous. It would take very little for someone to get flung loose and out into space, not to mention the forces that could easily crush someone outside, away from the protection of Voyagers artifical gravity and inertial dampening systems.

Before she could loose her wrath into the comms a loud, piercing alarm sounded in her helmet. Chakotay's voice, urgent and strained, burst in over the emergency override channel.

"Red Alert! All EVA teams, prepare for emergency transport!"

Gods Damn it... She opened her mouth, intending to yell a warning for her teams to get ready. Too late. She felt the transporter field envelope her as she and everyone else on her crew vanished in a waterfall of blue light...

"Ensign, get me confirmation and I mean NOW!" The captains voice was tight with both anger and fear. Up at his newly repaired station, Harry Kim was frantically adjusting his sensors,  
a look of cold trepidation on his face.  
Across from him, Tuvok was consulting his board just as urgently, if not as emotionally as the Ensign.  
When Voyager's long range sensors came back on line, they had detected something odd.  
It took time for the sensors to reach full functionality, so at first, no one was quite sure what they had detected. As the sensors reached full resolution however and detailed information began to appear, confusion had turned to fear.

Kim's board let out a definitive tone. "Confirmed..." He called out. "Borg signature detected, heading zero two one, range eighty two thousand kilometers and holding..."

"Chakotay...?" The Executive Officer was reading the displays on his board. "All EVA teams reported safely beamed aboard."

The Captain nodded. "Raise shields. Charge the Phaser arrays and load all Torpedo Bays. Helm..."  
She turned her attention forward. "Start moving us away from the contact, minimal Impulse. Try to keep as much of the heavier debris between us and them..."

"Captain..." Tuvok's voice was not exactly urgent. "Sensors are showing zero power emmanations from the contact." He was checking several readouts at once. "Negative energy emmisions, negative heat..." He called up another display, double checked it. "Negative Life Support or Life signs."

"Are you saying..." Chakotay had quickly moved up to Harry Kim's station and was running his own sensor sweeps.

Tuvok finished for him. "The Borg Contact appears to be completely dead..."

"Dead...?" Janeway had turned in her chair to face the Security officer. "Yes Captain. Sensors show internal temperature is absolute zero, Life signs negative, energy negative."

Janeway's teeth ground together. "Tactical plot on viewscreen..." She shot a quick glance to her first officer. "Get Seven to Astrometrics."

The main viewer changed, showing a computer generated representation of the nebula, Voyager and the new contact. Voyager was moving away at a slight angle, heading out of the debris field. The Borg vessel's position remained unchanged where it was, showing no sign of movement.

Chakotay and Harry Kim were still refining the sensor data. "Initial readouts confirmed..."  
Chakotay said slowly. "Borg contact appears to be completely dead..."

He shared a puzzled look with the Captain, who had risen and joined Tuvok at his station. She spent several moments looking over the readings, trying to determine what Voyager had stumbled into this time.

She double checked one readout, then looked up and glanced at first Tuvok, then her First officer.

"Helm..." She began slowly. "All stop. Hold position..."

At his station, Tom Paris turned a confused look on her. "Captain...?"

Her reply was quiet, and hard as steel. "Hold position Helm..."

Paris continued to look confused as he turned back to his board. "Hold position, aye Captain..." His fingers tapped out a quick series of commands. He watched his readouts and after a few seconds, nodded to himself.

"Ship's relative velocity is zero. Thrusters at station keeping Ma'am."

Janeway didn't immediately reply. She continued to mentally refine the data on Tuvok's screens for a few moments, then crossed back over to join Chakotay at Harry Kim's station.

"Contact is drifting..." Chakotay began. "It's in amoung one of the heavier concentrations of debris..."

"It's moving with the mass of rocks and particulates surrounding it." Kim's face was colorfully lit by the displays he was reading. "Still no emmissions or energy readings..." He double checked one of his readouts. "Of any kind. Contact is completely inactive."

"Astrometrics to Bridge..." Seven's voice sounded over the comms, making more than a few people jump.

Janeway glanced at Chakotay while thumbing a key on Kim's board. "Seven, report."

Down in her Sanctum, Seven watched as the information from the sensors built into a detailed image of the contact. Her eyes narrowed.

"Captain, the contact is not a full vessel. It appears to be wreckage, a fragment of a cube,  
approximately thirty percent of a whole ship."

She turned her attention to another display. "Most of it seems to be buried within a large formation of rock. What is left appears to be catastrophically damaged. The Spectographic readings indicate the approximate age to be..."

Seven fell silent. Up on the bridge Janeway shared a concerned look with her First Officer. After a few tense moments of continued silence, she quietly called out. "Seven...?"

"Captain..." The younger woman's voice was soft and deeply strained. "Based on the sensor readings, I believe we have found the wreckage of one of the vessels that were part of the original Borg armada, that was destroyed here ten thousand years ago..."

Janeway, Chakotay, Tuvok, Torres and Seven all stood together in Astrometrics, staring silently at the charred, twisted shape projected on the screen. The wreck was identifiable as a artificial structure, but just barely. Metal and rock flowed together in distrurbing ways. The hull, where visible, was torn, melted and ripped into long, distorted shapes like broken bones protruding from a wound. Few parts were intact enough to recognize as hull. The wreck was deeply embedded in a mountain sized chunk of rock, which itself looked like it had been melted, reformed,  
then melted again. The ancient stone looked as though a enraged giant had attacked it, broken, crushed and charred.

Seven was the first to break the silence. "Initial readings have been confirmed. That is the remains of a cube from the Borg armada..."

She sounded uneasy, but also, strangely, enthusiastic.

Chakotay looked more than a little unsettled. "But how did it survive the attack...?" He began. Torres, looking like she wanted something of her own to beat on, answered. "Clearly,  
it didn't..."

Seven saved him the trouble of replying. "It is likely this cube was one of the few that weren't destroyed when the planet was." The look on her face was almost predatory.  
" When that world exploded, molten material entombed the cube, hardened, then somewhat protected it when the primary went nova."

"'Somewhat' being a highly subjective description..." Tuvok, as usual, sounded unimpressed.

Janeway pulled her attention away from the display. "I only need to know one thing..."  
Her voice was tight and angry. "Does it in any way pose a threat to Voyager...?"

"No..." Seven replied with absolute certainty. "The vessel is as dead as the rock that encases it. In fact..." She began making adjustments on her console. "It's presence here may prove to be a benefit."

That drew startled glances from the other officers. B'elanna especially was looking more and more like she wanted to hit something.

"A benefit...?" She spoke slowly, in a tone so acidic it could have melted Duralloy plating.  
"How...?"

Seven was unimpressed by the threat in the Engineers voice. She replyed in a tone that hovered somewhere just below absolute zero. "Scans show many of the cubes internal spaces are still relatively intact and accesible. There may be technologies and equipment there that could help us with our goal of eventually equiping Voyager with a form of Transwarp Drive. Additionally, this vessel pre-dates the disaster that nearly destroyed the Collective. Much knowledge, especially relating to advanced technologies the Borg no longer posess, may be intact enough to be of use to Voyager."

She gestured to the display, where a scan of the wrecks interior was slowly building up. "There are organic remains but no life signs. The ship is dead as are any Borg still left onboard. We can take what we can and there will be no resistance."

"It is a logical course of action..." Tuvok's expression was unreadable. Janeway and Chakotay glanced at each other while Torres's face shifted from building rage to thoughtfullness.

"It may be Logical..." The Captain began. "But it may also be a terrible risk." She directed her attention to Seven. "You say it pre-dates the disaster. That means it, and it's drones were here when it happened..."

She walked over to the main console, touched a key and rotated the image a quarter turn.  
"The Borg believe thier intrusion into this system caused thier destruction. This wreck was part of that. If we board it, how great a risk are we putting ourselves in...?"

The officer's all exchanged glances. No one was quite sure how to answer.

After a few moments, Tuvok spoke quietly. "There are too many variables and unknowns in this situation to rely purely on logic. However, the fact that even this fragment survived argues that whatever destroyed the Borg here was not, in fact, targeting them."

Chakotay looked dubious. "Them why attack the world they were on?"

Seven looked like she really didn't want to be discussing this. "The... Attack, that spread through the Collective killed every drone that sensed it. The evidence overwhelmingly indicates the Borg were both the cause, and the focus of that attack."

Tuvok considered this for a moment, then shook his head. "Your reasoning is flawed..."  
he began. "Considering the sheer power of whatever wiped out this system, if the Borg fleet had been it's primary focus, the chances against even this tiny fragments survival would have been impossibly high."

Janeway sighed. They were both saying the same thing, from different points of view. She raised her hands, putting a stop to the budding arguement. "None of which answers the question. Do..We..Risk..It."

Seven was first to respond. "Yes. The wreck has been dead for nearly ten centuries,  
and the potential rewards are great."

Suprisingly, B'eLanna was also nodding. "The chance to get our hands on even a few components of a Transwarp drive system may never come again." She looked around. "Yes."

Chakotay was silent for a moment. "I agree with Tuvok." He began slowly. "If something so powerful it could lay waste to a entire solar system wanted to specifically destroy the Borg here, even this little piece would'nt have survived. Yes."

Janeway looked to her Tactical officer "Tuvok...?"

As always, his voice remained flat and unemotional. "As I said, the application of Logic to this decision remains uncertain. However the very existance of the wreck indicates that whatever power swept through here was and is, uninterested in it."

Well, that's as close to a yes as we'll get from him... Janeway thought to herself. After a few seconds, she made her decision. "B'elanna, you need to stay aboard to continue supervising repairs. Seven..." She turned to the younger woman.  
"Assemble a team of engineers and technicians that B'elanna thinks she can spare. Your primary objective will be any intact Transwarp components and technologies you can find."

Seven nodded. "Yes Captain..."

Janeway again looked over the image on the viewscreen. "Take no uneccessary risks and keep in constant communication."

"Understood..." Came the reply.

Janeway's gaze shifted back over to where Seven stood.

"Good luck..."


	6. Voyager: Immortal Chapter Five

The soft glow of the transporter beams faded, leaving six figures standing in total darkness. One by one, handheld and suit mounted lights switched on, sharp, cold beams of illumination cutting across the blackness.

Seven glanced at her companions before touching a key on her suits forearm.  
"Seven of Nine to Voyager. Transport successful..."

Next to her, Tuvok continued to play his light around, silently getting his bearings. Engineer Vorik, Security officer D'lessa, Engineering Technician Frey and Specialist Jensen rounded out the away party.

Vorik shone his light around the space they had transported into. With something a little less than typical Vulcan calm he whispered "Fascinating..."

If one was unlucky enough to find oneself aboard a Borg vessel, one would quickly discovered how easy it was to loose one's bearing. The strangely generalized and non-centric layout, coupled with the sheer seeming confusion of the design made most spaces aboard seem like every other space aboard, alien and non-sensical.

The space the Away team stood in now was far, far worse. Walls and Bulkheads were twisted and deformed in unimagineable ways, as if a enraged giant had grabbed the Cube and squeezed it flat. Techno-Organic technology had been charred and contorted, hanging motionless in Zero G like some hallucenatory spider's web. Ruptured conduits protruded grotesquely from shattered bulkheads like viens ripped from torn flesh. Everywhere pieces of wreckage floated.

Jensen played his light across one particularly mangled section of equipment. "Gods..."

Tuvok, the display on his Tricorder sending bands of color sliding over his faceplate, spoke flatly. "Confirming zero atmosphere, zero gravity. No energy emmisions of any kind. The ship is dead."

Seven didn't bother to confirm the obvious. Of all the group, only she seemed to have a good grasp of where to go. "Two levels above us and slightly to Port is one of the primary engineering nodes. If we are to find components of the Transwarp drive systems to salvage it will be there."

With no more explanation than that she turned and made her way through the floating debris, deeper into the wrecked interior of the ancient vessel. After exchanging a few hesitant glances, the rest of the Away team followed.

As they progressed, they found themselves in some areas that seemed relatively intact, if marred by obvious fire and explsion damage, while other sections were more horrificly mangled and deformed than the area where they had beamed in.

D'Lessa narrowed her big yellow cat's eyes and made a noise, not quite a growl, low in her throat. "Protected even by the rock, great damage the nova did do..."

Vorik was dividing his attention between the readouts on his Tricorder and dodging bits of floating debris. "Much of the structural damage we are seeing is the result of the nova, yes. However, the widespread nature of the destruction of the ships systems would indicate that damage occurred when the cube still had internal power, before the Nova."

"So..." Jensen began slowly. "some of this may be the result... GODS ABOVE!"

Everyone swung around at his wild cry, adding their lights to his. Trapped in a side alcove, Jensen had been the first to notice the corpse. The Borg was pinned between two dislodged sections of wall. It appeared to have been burned and in general looked torn, as if it had been mauled. What flesh could be seen had been preserved by the hard vacumn. It was impossible to tell what species it might have originally been as everything from the collarbone on up had been caught between the two massive slabs of machinery and crushed into paste.

Most disturbing was the arms. They jutted upwards, the hands clawing at the metal as if the drone had been trying to dig it's ruined head free. The fingers were ripped all the way down until metal cased bone showed.

Tuvok eyed the remains, his expression unreadable. He moved his Tricorder over the body. " It is dead." he announced.

Several other members of the Away team looked at him incredulously. Seven meanwhile was staring at the mangled form as if she had just seen a door opened onto a very personal vision of Hell.

"There will be more..." she spoke in a voice that was utterly dead. "We should keep moving."

The incredulous glances shifted from Tuvok to Seven, but she had already turned and walked away into the darkness.

On Voyager's bridge, Captain Janeway sat in her command chair, intently focused on the tactical display on the viewscreen. It showed, in detail, the interior of the wrecked Cube and the position of the away team within it. They were moving slowly towards one of the larger open areas inside the wreck, a space Seven had identified as a Primary Engineering Node.

If there was valuable salvage to be had it would be there. For the hundreth time since she had made the decision she had to stop herself from second guessing what they were doing.

Voyager was a very long way from home. Hurled across the galaxy by a highly advanced and technologically superior species that cared very little for the fates of those that crewed her. The starship was left stranded, facing decades of hard travel to return to Federation space.

Voyager had overcome many challenges and even more dangers as she made her way through unknown, uncharted regions of the galaxy. Of all the dangers, none posed a greater threat than the Borg, yet for all the terrible risks, there was a slim opportunity as well.

Borg technology was far in advance of most other species. The mighty Transwarp drives that powered their cubes allowed them to cross vast distances in a fraction of the time it took lesser races. A journey of decades could be cut to a few years in a vessel so equiped.

Acquiring such technology without being killed or assimilated however, was a goal Voyager's crew had yet to accomplish. The chance to scavange the drive systems of a wrecked Borg vessel, while supremely dangerous, was far too rare and valuable to pass up.

Janeway looked up as Seven's voice sounded from the comms. "Voyager, we have reached the entrance to the Primary Engineering node. The damage is too severe to pass through.  
We will have to cut our way in..."

"Acknowledged..." The Captain focused on that portion of the tactical display. "Proceed with caution..."

Aboard the wreck, the Away team faced a wall of twisted, buckled metal so badly mangled it was impossible to tell if any of the pieces had once been wall, floor or ceiling.  
Tuvok finished scanning for any potentially reactive or explosive residue in the wreckage. Finding none he holstered his Tricorder and nodded to Seven and Vorik. They,  
along with Frey, drew their phasers and began carefully cutting and vaporizing their way through.  
Off to one side, Jensen watched the orange yellow flares of the phaser beams, the white flashes of disintigrating metal and the flickering black shadows dancing through and amoung the wreckage. 'Was this what it was like...' he nervously wondered, 'when whatever it was that destroyed the armada struck...'  
He thought back, to the dead drone, clawing at it's ruined head. 'Or was it something far, far worse...'  
Ahead of him, the phaser fire ceased. The opening created was large enough for all the members of the away team to fit through. Tuvok and Vorik stood on either side, scanning the next chamber while the molten metal at the edges of the cut cooled from white hot to yellow, red and finally, seared blackness.  
Seven drew her Tricorder, ran a careful scan of the opening. "We should proceed..."  
she said, as much to herself as the others, and carefully ducked through the newly created entrance.  
The others followed and after a few seconds found themselves in a much larger, more open space.  
"Our primary goal should be to collect as many segments of the Transwarp Drive Coils as we can." She began, aiming her handlight downward. "The processed metal..."  
She froze, staring in blank shock at the scene her light had revealed. The others,  
seeing her reaction, aimed their lights downward as well.  
Tuvok and Vorik both inhaled sharply, the things they saw almost overwhelming even Vulcan logic. D'Lessa let out a choked snarl, her hair literally standing on end. Frey was making a noise somewhere between gagging and screaming, his eyes practically bugging out of his head.  
Jensen stood, all color gone from his face. He shook his head back and forth, as if he wanted to look away but couldn't. His mouth hung open as if he would scream, but only a distorted,  
warbling moan came out.  
'Worse...' the thought ran his traumatized mind over and over and over again.  
'So much worse...'


	7. Voyager: Immortal Chapter Six

The light streaming through the windows shifted between patterns of burnt orange and dusky yellows to darker blood reds. Clouds of dense gases and streamers of particulates intertwined in strange forms, like the building of some monstorous storm.  
A storm that seemed far away, yet could break at any moment with savage fury.

None of which helped ease the tension in Voyager's conference room. The Captain,  
Chakotay, Seven, Tuvok and B'elanna sat around the table, their faces grim. There was no talking.

The wall display was replaying the footage from Seven's spacesuit, just as she finished burning through the wreckage into the Engineering Node of the ancient Borg vessel.

"Our primary goal should be to collect as many segments of the Transwarp Drive Coils as we can." Her voice sounded small and far away. On the screen she played her light downward, toward where the coils were. "The processed metal..."

Her voice stopped. Directly ahead was a large, somewhat open area, battered and deformed like the rest of the wreck but still accessable. Huge, charred and broken masses of machinery protruded from walls and ceiling, overhanging a large curving arc of oddly colored metal.

The remains of a walkway ran from just below where they stood, out a distance before ending in a tangled mass of torn metal. The walkway was twisted, the struts and supports bent and snapped in disturbing ways.

A few meters away, a Borg drone stood on the walkway, next to a particurally twisted mass of supports. It's body was charred and strangely mishappen, perhaps the result of catastrophic skeletal damage.  
It's mouth was distended, gaping wide. It looked like the drone had been screaming when it died.  
A long, sharp fragment of a broken strut had been driven through the drones face, through it's head and out the back of it's skull. Dark Borg blood crusted the strut while bits of seared tissue and fragments of torn Borg implants formed a gruesome blossom erupting from the wound.  
The drones hands were locked around the shaft of the strut in a literal deathgrip. From the way it's hands were positioned, it appeared the drone had been trying to drive the shaft deeper into it's skull as it died.

Behind and slightly above the first drone floated the remains of another one. It was missing a leg and the upper body looked like some wild animal had clawed and savaged it. It too appeared to have been screaming when it died, dark blood frozen all around the mouth. It's one remaing eye was open wider than seemed physically possible and icy tears of techno-organic blood streamed outward from it.  
The Borg's hands were clenched so tightly around it's skull they had torn into flesh and metal alike. The drone held it's own head out in front of it, having somehow, impossibly ripped it off. Bits of torn flesh and twisted circuitry were all that connected the cranium to the stump of the shoulders. There were no words, in any known language, that could have accurately described the expression on the drone's ruined face.

A new sound came over the speakers, of someone gagging. As the lights played around the chamber, they revealed dozens of drones floating wieghtless or tangled in the wreckage. All had three things in common. They were dead, their heads had all been destroyed, some in ways that could not be imagined, much less described, and the worst of the damage, it appeared,  
they had inflicted on themselves.

"No, no, no, no..." D'Lessa's voice, hoarse and grating, sounded over the comms, joining with Jensen's whispering plea. "Gods... Gods..."

"Computer, end playback..." Janeway's sharp command cut through the room. The computer beeped obidiently and the horror on the display faded into blackness.

For several long moments, no one spoke. Chakotay's face was ashen. Seven and B'eLanna looked like the gates of Hell itself had opened wide to provide them with a personal view of Damnation.  
Tuvok, to the casual observer, appeared unaffected. Janeway was not a casual observer however and the things she saw on her old friends face spoke volumes.

"All the drones we encountered not killed by the explosions or ship damage all appear to have died of self-inflicted cranial injuries." He began slowly. Chakotay glanced over at Seven,  
spoke softly, "It started on the planet's surface and spread to the Borg in orbit..."

"And the collective was forced to sever the Nueral links, to prevent it from destroying all Borg, everywhere." Seven was shaking, her voice a hollow whisper.

After a few more seconds of tense silence Tuvok continued. "Circumstances aside, the mission was at least partially a success. We were able to recover several largely intact segments of a Transwarp drive coil, along with it's relevant support machinery and technologies."

Torres shifted uncomfortably in her seat. It was a strain to find her voice. "We've secured what we salvaged on the Hanger Deck. It's going to take time to reasearch and reverse-engineer it into something we can integrate into Voyager's drives..."  
She looked at the Captain, her expression more desperate than apologetic. "There's no way we'll be able to have anything ready with the current repair schedule. It's going to take a lot more time than we have..."

Janeway glanced sharply at the young officer, but said nothing. She was right. It might take months or years of study to unlock the secrets of the ancient Borg drive. Right now,  
the thought of the remaining week and a half of repair work ahead of them before they could flee this cursed nebula was all but unbearable.

Again, a uncomfortable silence descended. After a few moments, Janeway nodded, as much to herself as her officers. "B'elanna, continue with the repairs. Safe to say, we need to get out of this Nebula. Commander..." She looked over to Chakotay. "Will we be ready for a safe exit when repairs are finished?"

"Yes..." Chakotay glanced over at Seven, who remained silent. "We'll have the plan on your desk for review by tomorrow but we believe it should offer us the best way to clear this sector without attracting the attention of the Borg..."

"Thank you..." The Captain said softly. She looked at all of them. "Thank you all...  
Dismissed..."

Stiffly, as if under a great weight, the officers rose from the table. As they filed to the door, Janeway called out. "Tuvok, stay a moment..."

The Vulcan security officer turned back, waited for his crewmates to leave before walking back over to the Captain. Janeway stood slowly, giving her old friend a almost pleading look. "We never should have boarded that wreck..." It was a statement, not a question.

"The endeavor was not without gain. Only time and circumstance can judge the price we will have to pay because of it."

"The price..." Her tone was derisive. "We've seen the price the Borg paid..." She turned slightly, gesturing out the windows. "Ten more days. Ten more days to escape this Hell."

Tuvok's answer was straightforward. "There is no logical reason to believe we will not.  
Repairs are proceeding according to schedule, the ship will be ready when the time comes. Regardless of it's other effects this place has done nothing to hinder or impare our progress toward our goal of leaving."

He paused, his brow creasing slightly. "Granted, the conditions we found aboard the wreck were troubling, but those events were ten centuries in the past. That this nebula is oppresive and detrimental to the mental well-being of the crew has proven to be fact. Given it's history as we have been told it, that is understandable for emotional beings..."

Janeway turned away from the outside view. "Emotional...? The Borg aren't emotional. They are cold, and practical and ruthlessly logical. And they are so terrified of what happened here they won't even approach. After seeing what you saw, what happened to them back then, do you really believe anything as small as logic or emotion will make any difference if whatever took them comes for us?"

Tuvok opened his mouth, then slowly closed it again. He met the Captain's gaze, his eyes grim.

"No..." She said quietly. "No. Neither do I..."


	8. Voyager: Immortal Chapter Seven

Carefully, the workpod disengaged the upper section of hull plating from the nacelle and pulled it clear. The tiny craft pivoted on it's axis, moving the hull section forward.

Torres watched as the huge piece of hull moved slowly past. The Sphinx manuevered it into position next to three other similar sections secured to Voyager's engineering section.

Voyager had moved just outside the massive debris field that had been supplying the raw materials for the repairs. Most of the repair / rebuild work was completed. Only one major project remained. The rebuilding of the Warp nacelles had been left to nearly last,  
based less on it's importance and more in the difficulty involved.

Fabricating, assembling and replacing the immensely complex Warp coils was, putting it mildly, a very involved process. It would take the combined skills of most of Voyagers Technical and Engineering staff to accomplish it.

Torres moved slowly forward along the nacelle, the magnetic pads in the soles of her spacesuit keeping her attached to the hull. Ahead, another workpod had swung into position above the newly created opening in the nacelle. It slowly descended inside and locked onto the damaged coil.

Torres checked her PADD, then queried her Engineering team, one by one. All commed back in the positive and a few minutes later the workpod gently pulled a charred and blackened Warp Coil out and away.

The little service craft turned and moved away with the dead coil, while another Sphinx lifted away from the Hanger Deck landing pad, towing a newly fabricated replacement coil with it.

The Chief Engineer watched as it was moved into position above the opening in the Nacelle. As it began it's descent, she tabbed the comm on her forearm.

"Torres to Bridge. Final coil's going in now. We should have it secured in about a hour..."

Far forward, on the Bridge, the Captain reclined in her command chair, watching the work on the main viewscreen. She leaned over, thumbed a key on her armrest.

"Acknowledged. Good work B'elanna."

Torres voice was slightly distorted as it sounded over the Comm. "It'll take us at least another twelve hours to reassemble the drive and button up the Nacelle. Powering up and conditioning the new coils will take another twelve hours. We can't really cut too much time off of that..."

'Unfortunately true' Janeway thought. "We're on schedule liuetenant. We'll be ready when the time comes. Bridge out."

"Can't be soon enough..." Chakotay mused from where he stood with Tuvok at the Tactical Station. The Captain turned slightly in her seat, glanced up at the First Officer. "Your talent for understatement is as strong as ever Commander..." A slight smile touched her face, then just as quickly fled.  
"What's the latest?"

Chakotay nodded to Tuvok then moved down to take his seat next to the Captains. "I just talked with the Doctor. He's had to confine ten more crewmembers to their quarters and sedate them..." His face was grim.  
"It's getting worse..."

"I know..." Her voice was soft. "As soon as B'elanna has the Nacelles secured, start moving us toward our exit point. The new coils can be conditioned and charged as we're getting into position."

Chakotay agreed. "It's risky. Conditioning the Warp Coils is delicate work, but it can be done on the move. The sooner we can clear this place..."

"The better..." She finished for him. "Go over everything one more time with Seven. Seventy two hours from now, I want to be away from this nightmare and on our way."

"Understood..." Chakotay rose and headed for the Turbolift.  
Janeway leaned back in her seat, her gaze drifting back to the work happening on the main viewscreen.

'Please God...' She thought to herself. 'Please... Let us be on our way...'

Cargo Bay Two looked like a cross between a junkyard and a quarry. One corner was occupied by the remains of Voyager's damaged systems. Molds, bulkheads, conduits and other pieces of technology not badly damaged enough to be outright scrapped littered the deck in various states of disassembly. It was tedious, frustrating work, but neccessary.

As far from home as Voyager was, it was usually wiser to recycle everything possible as opposed to trying to find the raw materials to fabricate new parts. Moving through uncharted, Borg infested regions of the galaxy made safely finding those resources just short of impossible, so when they were, Voyager's crew took full advantage of it.

Which explained the other half of the Bay. The materials needed for the repairs had already been beamed aboard, processed and fabricated into new parts. That process had been repeated so often the crews doing the work had lost track of how many times they'd done it.

The piles of raw ore, chunks of rock and massive boulders now spread across the deck were not for the repairs. The last of those pieces had been fabricated and were being installed.

The rockpile now filling up one entire side of the bay was for the future. Voyager would soon, hopefully, be leaving the resource rich nebula far behind and the Engineering teams were taking these few remaining opportunities to stock up on the raw materials they might need as they continued on their long trek homeward.

Vorik moved through the piles of broken rock, scanning and cataloging the various substances according to their concentrations, purity, rareity and quantity. Around him, teams of technicians and Engineers urgently but not carelessly carried out their own tasks. The bay was already crowded, with no room left for careless.

He finished scanning a oddly colored slab of rock. He noted with interest the high concentration of the special mineral Seven of Nine had identified as being crucial to the construction of Transwarp Drive components.

He logged the rock for processing and was about to move on to the next one when a voice called out...

"Sir... Can you come here please...?"

Over by the Bay wall, a young Engineer stood, running his Tricorder over a massive boulder, easily fifteen feet in diameter.

As he moved closer Vorik took note of the rock's color. It was a different shade of the color associated with the Transwarp mineral, darker yet glossy.  
"What is it, Ensign...?"

"Sir, I'm getting some confusing readings from this one." He gestured with his Tricorder. "For some reason the scans are getting scrambled, but there seems to be indications of some kind of processed metal at it's core..."

"Processed...?"

"Yes Sir..." The Ensign turned the Tricorder so Vorik could read the screen for himself. "But the way the overlaying rock is interfering with the signal..."

Vorik noted the readings on the Ensign's Tricorder, made several adjustments on his own, then ran a tighter, more focused scan.

There was definitly something odd in the center of the massive rock, that much was certain, but the scan was still too distorted to make out what. Vorik made several more adjustments, fine tuning the sensors, then ran the scan again.

This time it worked. It was still unfocused and slightly distorted, but there was no mistaking the image that appeared on the tiny screen.

"Oh my God..." The Ensign took a unsteady step backward, then another. "Oh my God..."

Trapped deep within the ancient rock, it's form contorted and broken, One of Four was still screaming.


	9. Voyager: Immortal Chapter 8

The Doctor moved slowly around the diagnostic table, carefully observing the the contorted form that lay there. Holographic eyes narrowing, a expression of frustration settling upon his features.

Behind him, the Captain and Tuvok stood at a cautious distance. The emotions,  
at least on the Captains face, were far less benign than the Doctor's.

Normally, by design, sickbay was one of the quieter spaces on Voyager. Living beings tended to do better when not agitated by loud, ambient noises. Quiet helped patients to relax and relaxed patients tended to begin healing faster.

Right then, Quiet was the one thing Sickbay was not. All the beds were full, as were the spare cots that had been broken out of storage. A low chorus of moans and whimpers filled the air, puncuated by the occasional panicked cry.

Here were the worst of the afflicted. Species didn't seem to matter. Human and non-human crewmembers alike were suffering, caught in the grip of whatever ancient evil it was that haunted the nebula.

These were the ones so overwhelmed by fear and a crushing sense of impending disaster they couldn't function. Some were gripped so strongly by panic they had become violent and had to be restrained. All were sedated, but for many, it did little and for the the worst cases the Doctor had been forced into the extraordinary step of inducing medical comas.

Janeway looked around at her fallen crewmates, feelings of responsibilty weighing heavily upon her, mixed with the bitter pangs of helplessness. 'Soon...' she thought to herself. 'Just a little longer and we'll be free of this..."

The Doctor finished his scans and walked over to the other two officers. As Janeway switched her attention to him, a terrified little voice in the back of her mind whispered to her,'you will never be free...'

"Well, this fellow certainly had a rough time of it..." The EMH began, gesturing to the humanoid shaped mass on the table. "This is mostly just a shell, the form of a drone in solidified rock. All of the organic components were burned away when this was formed although many of the Borg implants are still at least partially intact."

He tapped a series of commands into his board and a holographic image of the figures internal structure formed above it. "Much of the rock formed into the shape of the internal organs it burned away. Based on that and the condition of the surviving implants this drone was nearly dead when the molten rock engulfed it..."

Tuvok was regarding the misshapen form with a odd expression. "Nearly dead...?"

The Doctor nodded slowly. "Yes. There appears to have been massive damage to both the skeletal structure and adjacent implants as well as evidence of severe internal damage as well. Frankly,  
this drone should have died before the lave consumed it."

Janeway was feeling something, something she couldn't have put into words even had she wanted to. "And we know it wasn't dead because...?"

The Doctor's tone was flat. "Because of the way the rock formed in the shape of the drone's internal structures." He gestured to two, roughly shaped masses in the chest cavity. "This drone inhaled the molten material, enough to fill it's lungs past bursting then outward to the rest of the organs. It died breathing liquid, superheated rock."

The nameless feeling was growing worse, raising the hairs on the back of Janeway's neck. She felt danger, unfocused yet overwhelming, rushing headlong towards them all. She felt like running, like fleeing blindly from something she could never hope to survive, much less understand.

She felt like screaming. Off to one side, the EMH had continued speaking, gesturing now around the area of the head. "...As hard as it is to believe, there's still some activity in the nueral implants, although given Seven's timeline, I'm at a loss as to explain how. Any residual energy should have faded centuries ago..."

The Doctor's droning pulled her away from the near mindless panic that had been threatening to overwhelm her. With a supreme effort, the Captain forced her attention back to the here and now.

"And so..." She Interrupted, "To sum up...?

The EMH looked somewhat annoyed, as if to say, ' that's what I was doing...'. "How the Nueral implants remain active is a mystery but further examination may yield a answer, possibly even lead to some recoverable data from when the drone was still alive."

Janeway felt something cold and hideous run down her spine. Next to her Tuvok spoke in a low, almost threatening tone. "Considering Seven's descriptions of the massacre and the conditions we found on the wrecked cube, it is highly questionable if we would want to recover that data."

"At best..." The Doctor's expression was nuetral. "We might recover some basic enviormental readings, command instructions or procedural routines. If nothing else comparing the basic operational functions from a drone from nine plus thousand years ago to the Borg as they are today could, just possibly,  
lead us to some advantage we could use to protect ourselves."

Tuvok's voice was cold. "Unlikely, Doctor."

Undettered, the EMH turned to face the Captain directly. "Even after we escape the nebula, we will still have a very long way to go before we can escape Borg territory."

Janeway was silent for a moment, still fighting her internal battle to supress the mindless panic clawing at her. She opened her mouth to speak but was cut off by a loud tone from the ship's comms.

"Torres to Captain..."

Janeway swallowed hard. "Go ahead Lieutenant..."

Torres voice sounded utterly exhausted, yet held a edge. "Repairs are complete Captain. The Warp Core is powered up and we're applying energy to the Nacelles. We've begun conditioning the new coils and the coolant system is recharged and operating perfectly.  
Impulse drive is on-line and all ship's system's are green and strong." She paused and one could literally feel the desperate hope as she spoke. "We're ready to get underway."

Janeway couldn't have described the flood of emotions that swept through her at that moment if she tried. Only with a supreme effort did she keep her voice steady.

"Thank you B'elanna. Thank you. Well done." She drew a breath. "Get some rest now,  
you've more than earned it."

She shared a look of near joyous hope with Tuvok as she called out. "Captain to the bridge..."

"Bridge Aye..." Chakotay's voice, even over the comms, sounded almost buoyant.

"Commander, set a course for our exit point, impulse power, as quickly as is safe.

"Yes maam..."

"Coordinate with all relevant departments. I want everything ready when we reach our exit point. We'll only get one shot at getting away clean."

"We'll be ready Captain. Ready and then some."

"We'll need to be. Captain out."

She looked over at Tuvok, too exhausted to smile. "Finally..."

Tuvok arched a eyebrow, an emotional outburst for a Vulcan. "Indeed..."

They both turned and headed for the door. They had nearly reached it when Janeway slowed and, almost reluctantly, turned back. The Doctor stood by the contorted stone figure on the diagnostic table, waiting for someone to bother and acknowledge that he was still there.

She spoke slowly. "Proceed Doctor, with extreme care. Keep us appraised of your progress and if you find anything that in any way could pose a threat, I want you to immediately purge the data from the memory banks and beam that..." She nodded to the stony mass, "out into space. Understood?"

"Clearly Captain." He sounded pleased, although because he had been given permission or that someone had actually bothered to remember him was unclear.

Janeway took one last look at the twisted shape, then turned and left with the Tactical officer. The EMH opened a cabinet, began gathering instruments and probes and started arrainging them around the misshappen rock.

"Now my friend..." He began. "What secrets do you have for me, hmmm?"

On the table, One of Four continued to scream in unimagineable torment, sealed forever in stone and death.


	10. Voyager: Immortal Chapter Nine

Voyager moved slowly through viens of thick gasses and particulates, around one thousand kilometers inside the nebula. The sleek Federation starship moved cautiously,  
her sensors reaching far out past the nebulas edge.

Just above her primary deflector dish, one of her Torpedo launchers glowed red for a few moments, then flared white as the last of a series of specialized probes was launched outward.  
The probe accelerated toward the nebulas edge for a few moments, then switched off it's drives, letting inertia carry it. It burst from the thick clouds and fell outward into clean,  
open space.

On Voyager's Bridge, Commander Chakotay stood next to Harry Kim, watching as the final probe glided towards it's designated parking orbit. "Last Probe is away Captain..." Kim spoke up. "It'll reach position in... six minutes."

"Alright Harry. Good Work." The Captain reclined in her chair, but she was anything but relaxed. Her shoulders were tight and her grip on the armrests was so strong her knuckles were standing out white.

'So Close...' She thought. 'We're so close...'. Under full impulse, Voyager was only a minute away from the nebulas edge. All she had to do was give the order.

Of course, deep within Borg territory, with Borg cubes possibly patrolling just outside of sensor range, it could also be the last order she would ever give.

'Patience...' She counselled herself. 'Patience...'

"Probes are nearly positioned..." Chakotay sat down next to her. "B'elanna says the Warp drive will be fully operational in less than a hour. All other stations report ready. As soon as the sensor data gets processed..."

"We can make our move..." She finished. Voyager had spent the last several hours launching specially modified probes outside the nebula. The probes had been equipped to scan their surroundings, then, when activated, broadcast sensor signals that exactly matched to the empty space around them.

The probes had set themselves in a huge, spherical formation, a sphere that would move with Voyager as it left the nebula. If there were any Borg ship's lurking nearby, unless they knew exactly what to scan for, in theory, their sensors would show only the empty space surrounding the gas cloud.

Voyager would move slowly away from it's hiding place, surrounded and shielded by the probes.  
Once they had determined that there were no Borg vessels in the vicinity, Voyager would go to warp, leaving the cursed nebula and the Borg, far, far behind.

As a backup, each probe had been secondarily set to transmit sensor signals exactly like the ones Voyager gave off. If the ship was detected, the probes would begin transmitting thier false signal while lighting their drives and exploding in all directions at once.

The Borg's sensors would show a hundred different Voyagers, heading outward in every which way. By the time the Borg figured out which target was the real one, Voyager would, hopefully, be long gone.

It was a bold plan. Chakotay and Seven had given Voyager it's best chance to get away cleanly. Even fully repaired, Voyager was in no way a match for a Borg Cube. It would require stealth, caution, and more than a little good luck to make it all work.

"Tactical..." Janeway called out. The view of the dusty gas cloud around them was replaced by a computer generated map showing Voyager's position within the nebula as well as the waiting sphere of probes, positioned just outside in open space.

The Captain leaned forward slightly, studying the display. "Helm, all stop. Align us for formation keeping with the probes and hold position."

Paris let his fingers dance over his controls. "All Stop. Aligning us to the probe formation,  
aye Captain..."

Voyager slowed, turning bow outward. She moved carefully into position behind one of the thicker clouds of drifting gas. One thousand kilometers ahead, the formation of probes waited.

Janeway watched, as the computer generated image of Voyager moved to join formation with the sphere of probes.

"We go..." She began. "As soon as the Warp Drive is ready." She turned in her seat to face Chakotay. "We've got some time. I want to go over the contingencies again, just in case this goes poorly."

"Aye Captain." Janeway rose smoothly from her seat, followed by Chakotay and moved up to the conference room door. "Tuvok, you're with me..."

Down in Main Engineering, B'elanna Torres watched her readouts with the attentiveness of a lion watching her prey.

Behind her, the Mark Nine Warp Core glowed with power, sending ripples of blue, purple and white light streaming across the walls. A deep rumble that could be felt as much as heard emanated from the core. For the moment, it was low, holding at idle.

Torres examined one readout, then reached over to her console and brought up another.  
A tight smile touched her features. The new Warp Coils were nearly ready. The power conditioning was going without a hitch and at the rate they were going, in another hour...

A tone from the ship's comms interrupted her train of thought. "Bridge to Main Engineering..."  
The voice was Chakotay's. "Lieutenant Torres, report to the briefing room."

"PuQlod Nuch..." She snarled under her breath. She tabbed a key on her board. "Torres to Chakotay, The conditioning on the new coils isn't finished yet. In about a hour..."

"Understood Lieutenant." The First Officer interrupted, sounding less than sympathetic. "This won't take a hour. Report to the briefing room."

There was a definitive click from the comm as chakotay shut down the connection. Torres stood grinding her teeth for a second, then swung around and shouted "VORIK...!"

Up on Engineerings upper level, the Vulcan engineer looked down impassively. "Yes Lieutenant?"

"Take over. They want me up on the bridge. Keep a tight eye on those resonance levels. The second it reaches optimal, call me..." She started to turn, then looked back. "In fact, if I'm not back in thirty minutes, call me anyway."

Vorik cocked his head to one side. "Why...?"

The Chief Engineer could almost feel her blood starting to boil. "Because I'll be needed here, not in another pointless meeting going over what's already been gone over a hundred times."

Vorik still looked confused and she almost snarled. "Make something up, I don't care what. Just make it sound like you need me back down here."

The Vulcan officer looked offended. "We may, in fact, not need you here. To say otherwise would be a lie. Vulcans do not lie..."

Torres smiled, her expression bordering on predatory. "Learn..." She growled, then walked away.

In Sickbay, the EMH sat in his office, studying the fragments of data he'd been able to pull from the dead drone's surviving implants. There wasn't a great deal of it.

Despite his insistance that he could salvage something useful from the ancient, stone cased remains, so far most of it, while fascinating in it's own way, wasn't really helpful.

As a medical officer, he was especially interested in the drone's vital sign's leading up to it's death. If anything, he had underestimated how badly hurt the Borg was before the molten rock had entombed him forever.

His board beeped softly. One of the least damaged components had been the occular implant. Oddly,  
it was also the implant with the most residual energy, although despite his best efforts the Doctor still had no idea what type of energy it was or how it had endured all those thousands of years since the Drone's life ended.

The EMH had had no luck understanding the data he'd pulled from the implant, so he'd uploaded it to the main computer and let it try to make some sense of it while he moved on to examining the few other active components.

The beep was the computer telling him it had finished. He read the screen, slightly suprised by the results.

The Computer had been able to proccess the badly scrambled data into five, equally badly scrambled images. It wasn't much, the EMH reasoned, but it was something.

He brought the processed images up on his desk display. Except for the affected crewmembers in various states of sedation, he was alone in Sickbay. He knew Voyager's breakout from the nebula was near, and all of his medical staff were needed elsewhere.  
He had hoped as Voyager pulled away from the heart of the nebula and approached it's outer edge it's effects on the stricken crewmembers would lessen. As Voyager drew closer and closer to the boundry however, that hope had proven false.  
The affected crewmembers were still caught in the grip of a overwhelming, near mindless fear of something waiting to consume and destroy them all. Sedation of various types and in various doses had rendered most of them controllable if not calm or comfortable.

Engrossed by the recovered data as he was, he failed to notice as first one, then two, then several of his patients began to tremble and convulse.  
Oblivious, he leaned closer to his display, intensly studying the five recovered images. All were grainy and distorted to various degrees. The first showed the interior of some large structure. Borg technology,  
much of it more advanced than the Collective of their era could produce, glowed oddly with lights both within and outside of the normal visual spectrums.  
A drone stood nearby, consulting a large, indecipherable display hanging in the air. He had never seen anything like whatever species it had been before it was assimilated.

The second image, somewhat clearer than the first, showed three drones standing around a literal waterfall of cryptic, holographic information that fell from ceiling to floor. As far as the Doctor could tell, they appeared to be communing with it.

The third image was badly distorted and appeared to be a holographic display of a hellish, toxic landscape of broken, twisted rock and a storm lashed, darkened reddish brown sky.

He leaned in closer. The fourth image, though far from clear, was vastly different from the first three.

Behind him, most of his patients were shivering, twisting side to side. Many of them were waving their arms in front of them, as if trying to ward off something unseen and terrible. Their jaws worked spasmodically, yawning open as if they were trying to scream. All of their eyes were squeezed tightly shut.

The Doctor continued staring closely at the fourth image. While impossible to be sure,  
the drone appeared to have been looking up. Masses of stone and rock, partly molten and miles across, hung in the air above the drone. Oceans of magma seethed and churned around them.

The EMH had no idea what he was seeing. A organic being would have recognized it right away. The doctor was staring at a image of Hell.

The Doctor continued to stare at the image, trying and failing to understand it. After a few moments he gave up and called up the last image.

The writhing, convulsing patients out in sickbay suddenly stopped moving. Although the holographic medical officer could not feel it, the atmosphere in medical had suddenly turned from distressed to one of absolute, inescapeable disaster.

The final image was the worst distorted. It was similar to the fourth image although in this last one the drone appeared to be looking down. It showed a vast, bowl shaped wound ripped into solid rock. The surface was cracked and ravaged while mountains hung in the air, bathing in the churning, turbulent sea of magma.

Near the center of the image appeared rocky formations that at one point, could have been ruins.  
Within the ruins was...

The Doctor blinked, shook his head. There was definitly something there but he couldn't make it out.  
For him it was static and distortion, not blank, but not clear either.

He entered a sequence on his keypad, requesting further enhancement. The image shifted slightly as the ship's computer tried to clear up the badly degraded scene. After a few moments, it beeped,  
indicating it had done what it could.

If anything, the distortion was worse. The Doctor continued to stare at it for a few seconds, frustrated.  
Finally he transferred the image from his small desktop monitor to the larger wall screen behind his desk. Perhaps if he could...

A sound interrupted his train of thought, a sound like he had never heard before. A high pitched, raw scream of absolute and total despair. He swung around and his holographic eyes went wide.

On the bridge a almost palpable feeling of anticipation filled the atmosphere. Voyager waited,  
less than a thousand kilometers from the clean freedom of open space. Within a hour, possibly less, the Warp Drive would be fully charged and ready. Then, they could leave. Then, they could put this cursed section of space behind them. Then, they could resume their course for home...

A loud beep from his console made Harry Kim jump, pulling him away from his wandering Thoughts. His system had been analyzing the sensor data from the probes, simultaneously searching for any sign of Borg activity outside the nebula while building up the perfect signal to mask any trace of Voyager's passage.

Both jobs had finished and the results displayed on his board brought a smile to his face. He quickly ran his own double checks, then fingered his Comm panel.

"Bridge to Conference room..."

The atmosphere in the Conference room was, compared to the Bridge, a little more tense. Janeway sat, nursing a cup of coffee gone cold. Tuvok sat next to her. Chakotay stood to one side, arms folded across his chest, his expression nuetral.

Torres stood in front of the wall display, gesturing to a simulation running there. "You asked what I thought..." She aimed her words at Tuvok. "I'm telling you. If we're detected and have to use the probes as decoys, we should have groups of them clump up, at least initially..."

The Comms chimed, interrupting her. "Bridge to Conference Room..." The voice was Harry Kim's. He sounded happy about something.

Janeway exchanged a quick glance with Chakotay. "Go ahead Ensign..." She called out. "Captain, the sensor sweeps and masking signal processing are done. "Ready to be reviewed..."

"Understood Harry. Good work..." She nodded to her First Officer, who returned the gesture and headed for the door. "Commander Chakotay's on his way. Captain out."

After Chakotay left, the Captain reluctantly returned her attention to the other two officers.  
"On the surface Tuvok, her idea has merit."

The Vulcan security officer slowly shook his head, in a derogatory manner as far as Torres was concerned. "I do not believe the tactic will be as of as much benefit as Lieutenant Torres believes. While such ' clumping ' may, in fact, generate a stronger signal, it will also mean fewer potential targets the Borg will need to pursue."

Torres teeth ground together. "That's why I said initially..."

The Comms suddenly chimed again, this time a more urgent, alert tone. "DOCTOR TO CAPTAIN!" Janeway and Torres jumped violently, while Tuvok surged to his feet. The EMH's voice sounded frantic, almost desperate. Behind it, a cacophany of hysterical screams, cries and moans almost drowned the Doctor out. "MEDICAL EMERGENCY. I NEED SECURITY TO SICKBAY IMMEDIATELY! THEY'RE TRYING TO KILL THEMSELVES!"

Tuvok had already slapped his CommBadge. "Security, send two teams to Sickbay immediately..."

Janeway had never heard the Doctor sounding that way before. In the background, the raw, tearing screams continued. "Doctor! What the Hell's going on down there?"

The EMH didn't answer for a moment, then his image popped up on the wall display. He was standing,  
bent over his desk.

Janeway gasped and Torres mouth hung open. Even Tuvok looked shocked. The Doctor's expression was one of near frantic desperation mixed with horror. Blood spotted his face and soaked his uniform.

"THE PATIENTS... THEY'RE TRYING TO KILL THEMSELVES. I NEED HELP, I CAN'T RESTRAIN THEM ALL BY MYSELF..."

"DOCTOR !" Janeway practically had to scream to make herself heard above the terrible wailing in the background. "Security's on it's way! What happened?"

"I DON'T KNOW..." He cried, his eyes wide and desperate. "I WAS REVIEWING THE IMAGES I EXTRACTED FROM THE DEAD BORG WHEN..."

Whatever he said next was lost on Janeway. She felt a physical jolt, as if something massive and deeply, deeply cold had crushed the air from her body. Her mind felt ripped apart and with the full weight of the last month's total despair, she felt the doom they had so desperately tried to avoid reaching out to claim them.

"DOCTOR..!" She screamed. "DELETE THOSE FILES! DELETE THEM ALL! NOW!"

"UNDERSTOOD! COMPUTER, PREPARE TO DELETE FILES... NO, NOO, NOOOOO!" Something, presumably one of his stricken patients had caught his attention. He turned and lurched away from his desk,  
trying to prevent whatever was happening off screen.

And behind his desk, glowing on his wall display, the fifth and final image extracted from the dead Borg came clearly into view.

And what had once been Kathyrn Janeway, B'elanna Torres, and Tuvok of Vulcan began to scream, a terrible, mindless wail beyond horror, despair, or understanding.

Chakotay had been standing with Harry Kim, reviewing his data, when he felt it. It came from nowhere and everywhere at once, a ice cold, sickening feeling of inescapable disaster.

A moment later, even through the bulkhead, even through the soundproofed door, he heard it. A desperate, mindless wailing of absolute, unimagineable pain. It was the sound one would hear if a soul was being murdered.  
It made him want to run, to turn his back and flee in total, blind panic. To trample and kill anything that would prevent him from escaping whatever it was that could cause a living being to make such a sound.

Instead, he launched himself towards the conference room door. "SECURITY! WE NEED A TEAM TO THE BRIDGE CONFERENCE ROOM RIGHT NOW!" After a seconds hesitation Harry Kim bolted after the first officer, following him through the doors and into a scene that would scar his mind for the rest of his life.

The smell of blood filled the air, mixed with several types of bodily waste. The sounds being made, reverberating like the wail of every soul ever condemned to Hell, frayed the mind.  
There was nothing intelligent or sentient in those horrible, terrifying screams. Just the type of pain that no living being could comprehend, much less endure.

The Captain stood by the table, staggering and spinning madly around. Blood covered her face and uniform. Her hands were sunk into her face, into her eye sockets. She was clawing desperately at the empty sockets, blood and viscous matter flying all around. It was like she was trying to reach her brain by digging through her eyes. Her mouth was distended wide, the scream coming from her almost beyond description.

Her eyes, dripping fluids and viscera, sat on the conference room table.

Nearby, B'elanna was a whirlwind of flailing arms and tearing, ripping hands. Her uniform was in shreds, as was the dark skin underneath it. Rose colored Klingon blood flew everywhere, seeping from the hundreds of rips and tears she had inflicted on herself.  
Her hands, clenched into claws, raked and tore at her head. Already most of the skin above her eyes and over the bony ridges protecting her skull was gone. Hair, muscle and flesh ripped away with wet, tearing sounds.  
Her fingertips were already gone and the sharp bone underneath left long, deep scars in the exposed bone of her cranium.  
Her scream was that of a horribly wounded and enraged animal, being slowly tortured to death.

Tuvok knelt on the floor beside the table. His mouth gaped open impossibly wide, his jaw dislocated. His back was arched and he held his arms out in front of him, palms up, as if in supplication.  
Every muscle in his body was strained and tightened to the failing point and beyond. Muscles,  
tendons, viens all stood out in hideous relief, threatening to burst through the skin.  
His eyes were open wider than was physiologically possible, his pupils contracted to tiny pinpoints of black. Dark green vulcan blood flowed like rivers of tears, leaking from every part of his eye sockets. Blood flowed from his mouth, his ears, his nose. As Kim watched groups of muscles beneath drumhead taut skin ripped loose. Blood was coming from his pores like sweat.

The worst part, Tuvok wasn't screaming. Kneeling in his own blood, muscles tearing, Tuvok made no sound. Whatever he was suffering, it had taken him beyond the ability to scream.

"HARRY, GET B'ELANNA!" Chakotay roared in Kim's ear as he charged past and grabbed the flailing, bloody form of the Captain.

For a second the Ensign stood rooted, unable to think or act. By now, the horrific wailing had reached every corner of the bridge and crewmembers were racing into the Conference Room to render what aid they could. Somewhere, in the back of it all, Harry swore he could hear the Doctor's voice, screaming to ' ERASE THE FILES! '.

"B'ELANNA!" Tom Paris wailed as he charged past, his scream finally breaking the paralysis that had locked Kim in place. As Paris tackled the writhing, torn form of the Chief Engineer, Harry raced in to help him restrain her.

And as more and more people charged into the blood soaked conference room, no one noticed the grainy, distorted image on the viewscreen suddenly disappear, to be replaced by a simple, blinking graphic.

'DATA PURGED.'


	11. Voyager: Immortal Chapter Ten

Voyager sailed gracefully through a open sea of stars. Cruising at a steady Warp Six, her nacelles canted up in Warp Flight mode, the glow from her primary Intercoolers bathed her hull in a soft blue light.

Brilliant stars of every color swept past. Alone and free in the vast openess of space, Voyager had resumed her long journey for home.

On the bridge, Chakotay sat in the First Officers chair, watching and feeling the flow and rythem of the ship around him. The hum of the ships electronics, punctuated by the occasional beep or tone from the individual bridge stations. The whisper of the life support system. And under it all, the deep, powerful rumble of the Warp drive.

It would have felt normal. It should have. But it didn't. And it didn't take a great deal of thought to understand why.  
The data extracted from the drone had all beem wiped from the ship's computers and the drone's stone corpse beamed back into the nebula. The memory of what it had unleashed upon them however, was proving far less easy to dispose of.

Up at the Tactical station, D'lessa tapped a series of commands into her board, using claws sharp and strong enough to tear Duralloy.

"Borg Vessels, at all ranges, the sensors do not show Commander. Clear ahead, our course is."

Chakotay nodded. "Understood." He spent a few more moments looking around the bridge then let out a small sigh and touched a key on his armrest.

"First Officer's log, Stardate Five Two One One Four Point Four. It's been two weeks since our escape from the Nebula. We've managed to avoid any contact with the Borg and are now on course for a sector of space where we believe their presence is small.  
The ship and crew have performed above and beyond all expectations, especially during and after our escape."

He hesitated, searching for how to put into words the price they had paid for that safe escape.

"The affected members of the crew that survived the final exposure to whatever was in the ancient Borg data continue to recover. Using a heavily modified version of the Nueral Repathing techniques developed by Doctor Katherine Pulasky of Starfleet Medical, our Doctor has purged all knowledge and memory of the incident from the minds of the afflicted Crewmembers. They remember that they suffered something terrible, they just don't remember what."

Again he paused, trying in his own mind to sort through something so unexplainable.

"Most of the affected crew have completly lost the last twenty to forty days of their memories. The Doctor has informed me such a large loss of time was neccesary to guarentee all effects of the final incident would be purged.  
While mentally the treatment has proven successful, the physical damage suffered, along with the trauma if not the memory of what happened, will take longer to heal. The Doctor reports, with luck, within the next month, most if not all the affected crewmembers will be fully recovered and able to return to duty."

Chakotay pressed the key again, ending and storing the log entry. Around the bridge,  
several of the crew shifted uncomfortably, but said nothing. Nobody felt much like talking anyway.  
Those who had survived the final exposure might, mercifully, not remember what happened,  
but the rest of the crew remembered exactly what that exposure did to them. Those memories would haunt them for the rest of thier lives.

He sat there, quietly, for several more minutes before rising to his feet. "Maintain course and speed. D'lessa, you have the Conn. I'll be in sickbay if anybody needs anything."

Sickbay was quiet when Chakotay entered. No screams, no indescribable wails. Most of the beds still held patients, but they were calm, many of them sleeping peacefully. The pools of blood, the pieces of torn, mutilated flesh, all had been cleaned up.

One would never suspect the horrors that had been unleashed here. Several of the patients still awake saw Chakotay and nodded to him. All of them had bandages and Medpacks covering thier heads to varying degrees. Thier expressions were calm, if a little vacant.

The EMH had done his best to explain the process to the first officer. Whatever ' it '  
was the crewmembers had seen in the Borg images from so long ago, it had effectively destroyed thier minds. In place of thought, a fear so terrible and all-consuming they had literally been trying to dig it out of thier brains.

The memory treatments had erased the fear and all the knowledge that caused it. At first,  
the procedure left the crew as ' blank slates ' but then the earlier, surviving memories began to emerge and personalities slowly began to re-assert themselves. Without the fear, whatever it was of, the crew started to show the first hopeful signs of recovery.

Chakotay made the rounds, stopping to check on several of the more seriously injured crew before heading to the Doctor's office.

He found the EMH at his desk, running several simulations of the memory wiping procedure on his wall display. As he entered the office the Doctor switched off the display and rose to face the First Officer. "Commander..."

The Doctor wore a haunted look, more than a little disturbing for a holographic construct. Although the data he had removed from the drone had been purged from his memory banks, the fact that, unintentionally, he had exposed the crew to the unimagineable effects of that data weighed heavily on him.

A Doctor's most sacred law was first do no harm. Because of his actions, eight of his crewmates had suffered unimagineably. Two more had died.

For a moment, Chakotay wished he was a better man. As it was, he had neither the means,  
nor the desire, to alleviate the Doctor's feelings of guilt.

"How's the recovery going..." He asked quietly.

The Doctor's answer was subdued. "With the one exception, it's going well. Everyone's recovery is proceeding at the predicted rate or better." He hesitated, casting a look out at the resting forms on the beds. "I think we can stay with our original estimate. Full recovery or as close to it as we can get to it by the end of a month's time."

"And the Nueral Repathing...?

"There's no need to worry about any relapses or flashbacks Commander. The treatment is permanant, it can't just reverse itself. The memories are gone for good."

"You'd better be Goddamned sure of that Doctor..." Chakotay hadn't intended his reply to be that harsh. He lowered his head and let out a sigh. "Doctor..."  
he began.

"Chakotay...?" a soft voice several beds down interrupted his thoughts. He paused a moment,  
nodded to the EMH. The Doctor nodded back then left to check on his other patients. Chakotay turned and walked over to the bed, a small, not quite smile touching his face.

"Getting plenty of rest...?" He teased quietly. Laying back on the bed, everything from her nose on up completely wrapped and covered in Medpacks, the Captain managed a small smile of her own.

"A little too much maybe. I know there're thing's that need doing and me sitting here on my backside isn't getting them done."

The First Officer raised his eyebrows a little, wondering just exactly what it was she thought wasn't getting done "No Captain." The Doctor's voice sounded from across the room. "The damages to your facial and cranial bones are still healing. Until they do, I can't implant your new eyes."

The Doctor actually sounded apologetic. "The Doctor's right Y'know." Chakotay tried to keep the concern out of his voice. "The ship's in good hands, the crew's doing fine. As badly as you were hurt, you need to rest and concentrate on healing..."

Janeway almost smiled, but the expression didn't last and her face fell. After a few moments she spoke quietly. "How was the service?"

Chakotay moved around to her bedside, settled himself on a stool.  
"quiet. A few people spoke but..."

When whatever it was in the salvaged Borg data had affected the ten crewmembers, they had done unimagineable damage to themselves in a very short amount of time. Only the intervention of the unaffected crew had saved them. All but two.

Lieutenant Hauer Arrh had no idea he had several weak blood vessels lurking deep within his brain. The congenital defect had killed him as multiple aneuryisms burst within seconds of his exposure.

No one was sure why Specialist Myii had died. She hadn't inflicted any wounds on herself that at first glance seemed fatal. The Doctor had gotten to her in less than a minute but somehow, in that time, she was gone.

Once the situation had stabilized, the Doctor had tried every method he could think of to revive her. Those working alongside him said his expression, when he realized there was nothing more he could do, was the saddest thing many of them had ever seen.

The worlds Arrh and Myii were born on were not exactly Xenophobic, but didn't actively seek out the company of other sentient species either. The two had been well liked by their shipmates but had made few close friends.

"I wish I could have been there..." She said quietly. Chakotay nodded in response before remembering the Captain couldn't see the gesture. "I know..."

There was a uncomfortable silence for several moments, then Janeway shifted slightly in her bed, began speaking.

"I can still feel it..." She started softly. "I don't remember it, or what it was. I don't remember anything from the time we reached the Nebula on, but it's still there..."

She shivered slightly. "I want to be screaming. I want to start and never stop. Every part of me feels like I should be screaming, that I have to scream and scream and scream but I'll be Damned if I can remember why."

"I know something happened to us. I know we almost died. From what you and the Doctor have told me I know. And removing those memories saved us..."

She blew out a shaky breath. "And I still feel like I should be screaming..."

"It will get better with time..." The Doctor had moved back near where the Captain lay and was noting her vitals on the display above her bed. "There are several branches of treatment that can help reduce the residual trauma you're feeling. Fortunately for you, I am well versed in all of them."

Chakotay thought about making a snide remark, decided it was neither the time nor the place.  
From her bed, the Captain spoke, her voice flat and weak. "I hope so Doctor.  
I think you'll find those skills being tested quite severely over the next few months..."

The EMH thought about that for several moments, then nodded slightly. Again,  
he felt the weight of guilt bearing down on him.  
"I will do my absolute best Captain. I promise you." He looked around at the other patients, his expression no longer boastful. "I promise all of you..."

He turned away, starting back towards his office. The Captains call stopped him. "Doctor, what about Tuvok...?"

The Doctor turned back, looked at Chakotay since the Captain had no eyes to meet.  
"I'm still working on ways to adjust the Repathing process to be more effective with Vulcan Physiology."

He said nothing more. Chakotay shifted uncomfortably on his stool.

"And...?" He prompted.

"Commander Tuvok has had approximately eighty percent successful Nueral Realignment." The EMH sounded like that eighty percent was a failure. "He has regained at least in part his rational mind but does retain the memories of what he saw. Even in a weakened state,  
those memories are a dire threat to what sanity he has been able to hold on to."

The EMH spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "He says he can use ancient Vulcan deep meditation techniques, along with something he called 'The Mind Rules' to purge the memories. I have also equipped him with a portable Med Station that should help if he starts to become overwhelmed. Beyond that, unless I can find a way to successfully modify the treatment, which is unlikely, there's little more I can do medically."

"Whatever you have to do Doctor..." The Captains voice held a trace of steel. "I don't care how far out of the box you have to go. We lose no one else, understood...?"

The doctor shared a anguished look with Chakotay. Both were glad the Captain couldn't see the looks of hopelessness that settled over their features like a shroud.

His voice held no confidence. "Yes Captain..." He said, then turned and walked away.


	12. Voyager: Immortal Epilogue

Tuvok was in agony.

He knelt on the floor in his quarters, wearing a traditional Vulcan meditation robe. A small, ceremonial bowl holding Vulcan incense sat on the floor in front of him, the pungent smoke slowly drifting upward.

Several small lights positioned around him took the place of candles. Otherwise the room was dark.

Next to him the Portable Medical Station sat quietly monitoring his vitals. Several tubes and wires led from it's ports to a medical cuff locked around his forearm.

Outwardly, he appeared calm. A closer look would have shown rapid, unsteady breathing, a not quite controlled trembling of the frame. A thin sheen of sweat stood out on his skin.

His eyes moved frantically beneath tightly closed lids, seeing far, far beyond the tiny cabin he knelt in.

He was Tuvok of Vulcan, staring at the image on the wall display. He was One of Four,  
burned, crippled, dying. He knelt on ancient stone. Mountains of rock floated around him, washed in seas of churning magma. The sounds of a world being torn apart rent the air.

In front of him, a solitary figure, robed and cloaked in black. His death was near,  
his body failing. The figure moved as if it sensed this, sensed death, and turned to face him.

The face was pale, indistinct. It looked like his species. It also looked like a Vulcan,  
and also like billions of other lifeforms. The hair, what could be seen of it, was pure snowy white. It might have been female.

He saw it's eyes. There were trillions of stars there, an eternity of eternities. Everything was there, in his eyes, and he saw it all.

He was the Immortal. He saw, from the very beginning, the arc of his race. He saw the very first single cell organisms dividing, evolving. He saw the slow, painful climb towards sentience, the years and centuries and ages uncountable. He saw the deeds of his race,  
the triumphs and tragedies, the overcoming of obstacles neverending and the things, great and vast and incomprehensible that would come to pass through the eons to come.

He saw the twilight of his race, the long decline from heights undreamed of. He saw the last death, of the last lifeform to carry any hint of his peoples essence. His mind, finite,  
limited, could not comprehend, yet he saw, the entire existance of his people, along a span of time so vast no words existed that could describe it.

All this and more, he saw. The entirety of the universe. From the first moment of existance to it's last, he saw everything. He saw his people and all they had done, all they would do,  
for ages uncountable, measured against the backdrop of the entire life of the universe.

And he, and everything his people would ever be, were nothing. A single drop of water in a endless sea would have had infinitly more impact than the existance of his entire species.

He saw this for humans, He saw this for Vulcans and Klingon's too. He saw the entire length of existance for the Borg and every species they had ever assimilated. All of it,  
everything that defined the history of life as it was understood. And it was nothing.

Everything that made up what was, the struggle and achievment of billions of life forms through time uncounted and undreamed of.

They were nothing. A miniscule grain of sand, being toyed with by the winds howling over the greatest desert to have ever been was unimaginable greater than they ever could be.

They believed they were special. They believed they were the dominant forms of life.  
He saw they're end and he saw what came after. Things that defied any possible description as a life form, so vast and great whole new forms of thought and speech would be needed just to comprehend them.

He saw them, and all they would do. He understood none of it, but it was there, in his eyes. He saw their reign, a span of time that could not be described by any spoken language that would ever exist. He saw the time they existed and he saw their eventual end.

And beyond that, he saw. He could form no frame of reference, no language that ever was could express what he saw. Things so great and terrible no being that suffered death could ever begin to understand.

He saw the lifespan of Gods. All these things and so much more. The Immmortal watched it all, from the time of the new-born universe's first lifeform to it's end in a cataclysm beyond understanding or imagining.

All this was there, in the Immortals eyes. And in that one, almost instantaneous glance,  
he saw it all.

His mind became ash. His body attacked itself, a suicidal attempt to somehow tear out what it had seen. There was no more him, only a pitiful, infinitesimal thing forced to see what even Gods would fear to look upon. The endless, mindless screaming was the only expression left that could describe the pain of being utterly consumed by something immeasurably worse than the most terrible of things ever imagined.

There was a click, then a hiss, then the terrible, terrible memory became indistinct. It's power dulled, the visions fading to a grey fog.

Blowing out a slow, unsteady breath, Tuvok slowly felt his concious mind return. The Medical Station, constantly monitoring his vitals, beeped softly. The dose of relaxants, nueral supressants and specially formulated memory blockers it had injected had done it's work well.

Slowly, Tuvok calmed the trembling of his frame. He allowed himself a few moments to simply sense the room around him, the sounds, the smells, the blissful, wonderful simplicity of it.

For a short time, he allowed himself to rest and simply be...

After a period, he began to sink into a deep, meditative state. He brought his weary mind to a sharp, focused point. He used the mind rules to build a framework, a organized,  
tightly structured fortress to both withstand, and contain the things he had been forced to witness.

The Doctor's Nueral Repathing had been more successful than he thought. Easily nintey five percent of the memory had been removed. Unfortunately, the power of the remaining five percent was so great, his concious mind was still in terrible danger of being crushed and buried beneath the fear of what he had seen.

In the structure he built within his mind, he sorted and arraigned the memory, at least the parts of it he could comprehend. The rest, the things that transcended what a finite life form could understand, he slowly, painfully purged.

Each time he let the memory overtake him, let it come within a heartbeat of shredding his mind, he took some of it's power. He was battered and reliving what he had seen was torture, but each repitition made it weaker, made more and more of it fade into the grey nothingness brought on by the medications, never to return.

It would take time. It would take a effort beyond anything he could have ever envisioned.  
It would take pain, so much pain. And at the end, there was no guarantee. Unless the Doctor succeeded in adapting the treatment fully to his Vulcan physiology, The remaining five percent of the memory could still, despite all the mental strength he could muster, destroy him.

In the end though, he would keep trying. He had no choice. He would master it, or be annihilated by it. There were no other paths to follow.

Slowly, reluctantly, he allowed the memory to rise. It came swiftly, beginning to overwhelm him again. And as it did so, he reflected on the coldest truth he had been forced, at such extremes, to learn.

He had been shown the universe, in it's full scope. If he succeeded or failed,  
if he lived or died, if he got home or wandered hopelessly unto his end, it made no difference. He, and everything he called existance...

Was, and would always be, nothing.

And in a place where time and space held no meaning, the Immortal stirred. Somewhere a world was about to die...


End file.
